
VOLi. I 


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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



















STORIES 

I 

OF 

INDUSTRY. 


VOLUME I. 


By A. CHASE and E. CLOW. 

M ' * 


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^ COP xr ight- %- 

AUf 20 i89i 

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P. O S T O N.— NEW YOB K.— CHICAGO. 
EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 









Copyright by 

EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 


1891 


Southey tells us that “it is with words as with 
sunbeams, the more they are condensed the deeper 
they burn.’’ 

Having this thought in mind, therefore, we have 
endeavored to give, in as few words as possible, a 
little interesting information for young people; 
something that will aid them in acquiring habits of 
observation and lead to a knowledge of the com¬ 
mon things connected with the arts on which 
depends the well-being of our race. 

Truly “ that is a good book which is opened 
with expectation and closed with profit;” if this 
may be said, even in a small degree, of this little 
volume, the authors will feel more than compen¬ 
sated for the labor and thought expended in its 
preparation. 




CONTENTS. 


Page. 

COAT, . . 

•*••••• O 

Primeval Vegetation, {Illustrated) . 9 

WHAT IS COAL?.* 9 

Plants Found in Coal, {Illustrated) . 12 

Geology of Coal Bed, {Illustrated) . 15 

Section of a Coal-Mine, {Illustrated) . 15 

Coal, {Poetry) . 17 

VISIT TO A COAL MINE.18 

Something About Gas.25 

Gas Engine, Gas Stove, etc.27 

A City by Night.28 

PETROLEUM.81 

Petroleum Spring, {Illustrated) . 31 

METALS. 34 

GOLD.. 35 

Gold Mining, {Illustrated) . 35 

Gold Beating, Electro plating, etc. 42 

The Mint, {Illustrated) . 44 

SILVER. 45 

Peruvian Silver Mine, {Illustrated) . 15 

COPPER.48 

Copper Works, {Illustrated) .48 

BRASS AND BRONZE WORK.52 

Brass and Bronze, {Illustrated) .52 

Rolling Brass Plates, {Illustrated) .54 

ZINC.56 

Zinc Mines, {Illustrated) .56 

LEAD.59 

Lead Manufacture, {IIllustrated) .59 

TIN.63 

A Tin Mine, {Illustrated) .63 

Tin Plate Works, {Illustrated) .65 

IRON.67 

Iron Mine, {Illustrated) .67 

Scene in the Iron Country, {Illustrated) .70 

Blast Furnace Extension, {Illustrated) .74 

Iron Riveting, {Illustrated) .76 

The Music of Labor, {Poetry) .77 

BITS OF KING IRON’S HISTORY.78 

Horse-Shoer, {Illustrated) .79 

Bessemer Process, {Illustrated) .80 

Iron, {Poetry) ..85. 

LITTLE THINGS MADE FROM IRON. 86 


HI 



















IV 


CONTENTS. 


Page. 

Knives ..86 

Needles.88 

Pens and Pencils.90 

Nails. 92 

The Village Blacksmith, ( Poetry ).94 

SEWING MACHINES.95 

STOVES.98 

WATCHES AND CLOCKS.101 

MORE ABOUT IRON. 107 

Ma< hine Shop, {Illustrated) .109 

Making Wheels, {IIlustrated) .110 

Song of the Forge, ( Poetry ).Ill 

THE LATHE.113 

Ancient Lathe {Illustrated) .113 

Foot Lathe, ( Illustrated) .114 

Engine Lathe, {Illustrated) .115 

THE STORY OF YOUR HOUSE.118 

Ancient Dwellings {Illustrated) .118 

Tent Life {Illustrated) .120 

LUMBER.121 

Lumberers at Work.121 

Canadian Timber Slide.123 

SHIPBUILDING.126 

From Coracle to Iron-Clad, {Illustrated) .126 

Ancient Ships, {Illustrated) .127 

Ship-Building, {Illustrated) .130 

Building of the Ship, ( roetry) .132 

MARBLE AND GRANITE.134 

Quarry, {Illustrated) .134 

SLATE AND BRICK.140 

Slate Quarry.140 

Brick-Making.. . 141 

Bricklayers at Work . 142 

A VISIT TO THE GLASS-WORKS.143 

A Crucible, {Illustrated) .145 

Blowing the Bulb, {Illustrated) .145 

A Furnace, {Illustrated) .147 

Annealing Oven, {Illustrated) .149 

Window Glass.150 

Glass Tubes and Canes.151 

HOUSE BUILDING.153 

Carpenter’s Shop, {Illustrated) .154 

Building Processes, {Illtistrated) .155 

WALL PAPER.157 

FURNITURE MAKING.160 

POTTERY.162 

Pottery, {Illustrated ). 162 

Potters at Work, (7 llustrated) .165 

The Thrower, {Illustrated.) . 169 
















































< 








ANCIENT MODES OF LIGHTING 













































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


COAL. 

ID you ever stop to think 
Avhen you have watched 
some railway engine puff 
out of its round-house home, 

■ whiz away over the country 
with its precious freight; or 
when you have visited some noisy mill 
or foundry, what a vast amount of coal 
it must take to turn so much machinery ? 


5 













































6 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


Coal is to our manufactories what the main-spring is 
to the watch, and hardly any labor can be performed 
without it. Yet, before we can have so much as a hod 
of coal, mines have to be mapped out by skillful men ; 
tunnels made or deep shafts sunk ; gear fixed to bring 
the coal up ; means tried to drain and air the pits ; 
miners paid for their hard toil and risk of life and 
trucks and wagons made to carry the coal. Then 
there must be roads made to reach the sea-ports; 
ships to carry the coal over the water, and railways to 
take it from place to place over the land. 



Every step of this work is costly. The sinking of 
a shaft or pit is very expensive labor, and some pits 
have been bored very deep without coming to coal. 
Often after it has been carried hundreds of miles the 
coal has to be taken out of the coal ships (colliers), 
put into barges or lighters to go up the rivers ; or, 
perhaps, is transported to some railway again. Last 
of all comes the business of the coal markets, the 
merchants and small dealers, who bring the coal to 
our cellars. 

Have you noticed that some coal burns with a great 
deal of flame and smoke? That is because it is rich in 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


7 


mineral pitch or bitumen ; it is called bituminous coal. 
That hard, stony, clean-looking coal which burns with 
such a feeble dame, yet gives out such intense heat 
when once it is lighted, is the anthracite coal. Until 
close stoves and the hot-blast for furnaces came into 
use, anthracite was but little used for fuel, as it does 
not light easily and requires so strong a draught to 
keep it burning. 

The countless uses of coal ! how they show the 
power man has to turn the knowledge and skill he 
acquires by study, hard work and observation to good 
account. This one product of the earth, by means of 
man’s intelligence, has made a complete change in the 
industries of our country. It is only an age or two 
since the motive power of steam was called forth by 
coal. 

Once wrought-iron was made use of for machines, 
for carriages and for mining. Now every country 
is scored with railways: mills and factories are 
stored with steam-engines and looms, and coal 
and iron have altered our ships. 

Before coal was used to produce steam the sites for 
busy towns were selected near some mill stream, and 
the woods were seats of smelting iron. Now iron- 
making has ^one to the coal fields, where the coal, 
the iron ore, and the lime-stone, or flux, which helps 
to melt the iron, are all found close together. 

Some people ask " If we go on using such an immense 


8 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


amount of coal every year will not the supply give 
out; and then what shall we do ? ” But think of the 
coal area of our land ! there is the Allegheny coal¬ 
field, bordering the Alleghenies on the west side and 
reaching from the north line of Pennsylvania to the 
middle of Alabama, 58,737 square miles; the Illinois 
coal-field, which covers a large part of Illinois and 
portions of Indiana and Kentucky, its area 64,887 
square miles ; the Missouri coal-field, lying west of the 
Mississippi in the States of Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, 
Missouri and Texas, supposed to extend over 47,138 
square miles. When we add to all this the anthracite 
basins of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and the 
coal-fields of Virginia, Michigan, and North Carolina, 
we think there is little danger that these trouble-bor- 
rowers or their grand-children Avill seethe coal supply 
exhausted. England, France, Prussia, Belgium, and 


Australia are also rich in coal. 

As the coal in the mines is by degrees used up, 
men have to dig lower down to deeper beds, and 
this adds to the labor and danger in working. The 
cost of coal, the need Ave have for it, and the hard toil 
it takes to " win ” it, and the risk to the miners’ lives, 
all preach a sermon to us to be careful in its use. 

Scientific men have been thinking out other means of 
getting -the fuel Ave need until we have mineral oils 
and gas so good and cheap that Ave can use them for 
cooking or to warm our rooms. 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


9 



PRIMEVAL VEGETATION. 


WHAT IS COAL? 

HAT is coal ? How came we to know 

that it we bored pits a uuarter ot a mile 

* 1 • 

deep, and sometimes deeper, into the 
earth, we should find a black stone that 
would burn and be so useful for fuel ? Coal 
occurs in seams or beds. In some coal-fields, as 
many as eighty of these beds have been counted, and in 
some other places double this number. Some of the 
seams are as thin as a leaf, and they range through every 
thickness to thirty feet thick. The beds are not dug 
















10 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


out for fuel unless they reach a thickness of two or 
three feet at least, as they would not pay for working. 
The seams or beds are called measures, and if they 
had lain Hat in the crust of the earth, it is pretty cer¬ 
tain that we should never have known much about 
them. But the coal measures are not flat; they slope 
or dip, and stretch upward as well as downward, and 
the edge of a bed, every here and there, crops out on 
the surface. This surface coal is not so good as the 
deep-seated coal, but it was the first used, and it shows 
the direction of the slope or dip. 

When once this slope, was found, it was easier to 
sink a shaft down to the coal, the depth of which was 
reckoned beforehand, than to keep digging the coal 
deeper and deeper from the spot where it cropped out. 

In Belgium the coal measures are tilted nearly up¬ 
right, and, therefore, must be dug from the surface 
downward, deeper and deeper. There is a mine in 
Middle Island, New Zealand, fifty feet thick and 3000 
feet above the sea level. Here the fuel is tunneled 
out, no shafts are sunk, and there are no explosions 
of fire-damp, the filled trucks going down the slope 
of the mountain pull up at the same time a train of 
empty ones to be filled. 

Everywhere between the beds of coal are strata or 
layers of other rocks, such as sandstones, shales and 
clays, which seem to have been left many, many years 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


11 


ago as sediment in the bottom of water. The roof of 
the coal or rock, just above the coal-bed, as well as the 
floor is, as a rule, a shale of hardened mud. These 
shales, which split very easily, have stamped upon 
them impressions of leaves and ferns, and even the 
fossil stems and roots of plants —-often the relics of 
lofty trees! If we magnify a thin scale or section of 
coal, a plant-like structure can be seen. There is a 
kind of coal, called lignite, or brown coal, which seems 
to be the link between true coal and living plants. 
Now and then a trunk of a tree is dim out; one end of 

O 7 

which is scarcely changed from wood to mineral mat- 
ter ; the middle of this is brown coal, the other end true 
coal! Fossil plants in the coal measures vary in kind 
according to the place of the beds. Those furthest 
north, such as are in the Greenland coal, are like the 
plants which grow in Middle Europe. 

Marks of ferns are more common than any other 
plant in the coal measures. The beautiful fronds or 
leaves which, as there are no flowers, bear on their 


surface the fruit or spores of new plants, are very 
plentiful. This is not because they were the only 
plants which grew in those ages long gone by, but 
because they were so resinous as to be the last to 
decay. Besides ferns, we can trace in the texture of 
coal the grain of pine and fir wood, or the cone-bearing 
trees ; and in the fossil stems, plants like the common 


12 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


moss. Our present ferns and club mosses are pigmies 
compared with those which lived so long ago, and 
reached the size of giant trees. Similar lofty tree- 
ferns now grow fifty or sixty feet high, in the islands 
of the South Pacific Ocean. 



From these facts we infer that the coal-beds are a 
changed state of former vegetation, and that the bitu- 
men of the coal is the altered resin and turpentine, so 
plentiful in trees of the fir and pitch-pine family. To 
account for the great depth and the number of the 
coal-beds, we may be certain, that every seam was, 
however far back, a field of vegetation on the surface 
of the earth, and that every layer of shale or clay, 
now the floor and roof of the coal-beds, was formed by 
mud settling down at the bottom of water. So we see 
that the land has been covered by water as many times, 



STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


13 


at least, as there are strata or layers of shale ; and has 
become dry again as many times again as there are 
beds of coal. We believe, too, because the plants 
were tropical and of great size that the coal countries 
must have been, many times, much hotter than now. 
Fossil remains of animals such as can live only in hot 
climates, and others which can live in cold climates, 
are also found in abundance in the rocks. The nature 
of the rocks thus proves that, at long intervals apart, 
the land has had to bear the extremes of heat or cold, 
for ages together. 

o r? 

When we walk in some of our woods we sink up to 
our knees in the fallen leaves. As these leaves decay, 
they forma vegetable soil. Every autumn that brings 
down the leaves adds a new layer to its depth, so that 
by the time a hundred years have passed by, this soil 
has become very dee}), and in it are buried whole 
forests of ancient trees ! How much higher the trees 
now growing must be rooted than those which first 
grew upon the earth ! In Europe, there are many 
peat meadows or bogs; in Ireland, they cover a tenth 
of the surface. These bogs are masses of vegetation 
formed of the matted roots of decayed grasses and 
mosses which die down every year, and of the fresh 
annual growths that take their place. In the dee}) 
Irish bogs are found half fossil trees which are called 
bog oaks, and are often carved into fancy articles. 


14 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


The deep parts of the bogs are dense and dark, from 
the pressure of the soil above, and seem like lignite or 
coal. Roman pavements leave been found ten feet beloiv 
the surface* of some of the European bogs. 

Now let us look forward, say twenty thousand years. 
By that time the land will have sunk and been heaved 
up again many times; many changes of layers of 
sediment and new growths of bogs will have been o - one 
through with. Then, that which is now marshy land 
stretching out in the sunshine will have sunken deep 
down into the earth ; will have been pressed into dense 
solid rock by the heavy strata above it, and have 
become only as many inches thick as at first it was 
yards. Heat and chemical forces, acting upon this 
through so many ages, will have changed it into the 
black, shiny mineral which we call coal. 

So you see the kind of coal in a bed depends upon 
the kind of plants or trees that used to grow upon it 
when it was at the surface of the earth ; upon the 
amount of pressure above it and upon heat and time. 
The giant trees whose roots and stems are in the coal 
measures show us that the vegetation of the earth, long- 
before man came to live upon it, was in structure 
something like a moss which now seldom grows more 
than a foot h jo-Ji. 

Our coal-beds tell us a great deal about the ancient 
world and the appearance it must have worn, so long 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


15 


ago that we cannot count the years. We learn 
from them that part of our country has for many ages 
past been, at times, as hot as the Tropics, then as cold 
as the Poles ; that it has sometimes sunk below the 
sea and at other times been raised up high and dry. 
Learned astronomers have found out and taught us 
how such changes have been brought about by the 
movements of the earth with regard to the sun. Pv- 
and-by it will be part of our school lessons, to see and 
understand these wonders. 



When a shaft or pit is sunk down to the bed, the 




































10 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


miners do not try at once to get all the coal within 
their reach, but they cut or drive tunnels through, 
which they call drifts, and as soon as they get a little 
way in, they cut cross drifts right and left, so that at 
last the mine consists of narrow lanes or passages, and 
huge square blocks or pillars of coal, as regular as the 
squares on a chess-board, left to support the roof. As 
soon as the drifts reach the bounds of the mine, the 
miners remove these pillars, the most distant ones 
first, and let the mine fall in ; and this is the most 
dangerous part of their work. 

When the mines fall in, it often causes the surface 
of the earth to sink. In the coal districts it is not 
uncommon for great cracks to appear in the house- 
walls, and for chimneys to lean over, and buildings to 
fall, from the giving way of the foundations. 

Both in driving a passage through the seam and in 

O i- c c 

hewing the coal, the labor is much lessened by the 
readiness with which the coal splits in certain directions 
rather than others. These directions are three in 
number, and are called planes of cleavage. The first 
are the planes of the bedding, running even with the 
roof and floor of the mine. The second and third 
planes are at right angles to the bedding, that is, they 
run from roof to floor. This natural cleavage renders 
it simple to hew the coal in brick-shape blocks, the 
long sides of which are known as the face, and the 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


17 


short sides, whose fracture is the least regular, are 
called the ends. The sides cleave bright and smooth, 
but the planes of bedding are dull and sooty, because 
of a black and fibrous powder, to which the name of 
mineral charcoal and sometimes of mother-of-coal, 
has been given, and which lies between the planes of 
cleavage. Mixed with this loose substance may 
plainly be seen the remains of the stems and leaves of 
plants. Mother-of-coal soils everything it touches, 
and renders the miners at work, and even visitors to 
the workings, in a very short time as black as soot. 
It ignites also, instantly, in presence of a light, and 
some dreadful explosions in the pits, the cause of 
which could not be clearly traced, have been thought 
to be due to the firing of coal-dust. 

o. 


COAL. 

For thou shalt forge vast railways and shall beat 
The hissing rivers into steam, and drive 
Huge masses from the mines, on iron feet, 
Walking their steady way as if alive, 

Northward, till everlasting ice besets thee. 
******** 

Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea, 
Like its own monsters — * * 

Then we will laugh at winter when we hear, 

The grim old churl about our dwelling rave : 
Thou * * * * 

Shalt * * 

* pull him from his sledge, and drag him in 
And melt the icicles from off his chin. 


— Bryant. 



18 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



VISIT TO A COAL MINE. 

IKE Columbus in America, visitors to the 
coal mines land themselves in a new world. 
The aspect of the district is quite strange. 
Everything is black. Coal in huge black 
mounds abounds. Grim, giant, skeleton arms 
and wheels, the tackle of the different pits, 
stretch out in the murky skies, hoisting and lowering 
the cages of coal, while dense black smoke from 

























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


19 


the furnace shafts and coking ovens obscure the 
sun and fill the air with flakes of soot. The scanty 
herbage which wrestles with late, and the few sheep 
which crop it, are black. The railroad trucks and 
roads are black. Black barges laden with coal are 
towed along black paths through ink-black canals. 

Let us now wend our way to a large mine near, 
directed by lurid streams of natural gas, which are 
ever flaring, night and day, fed from the exhaustless 
stores of " bottled sunshine,” as George Stephenson 
said, which the ancient ages placed to man’s account 
in the deep crust of the earth. Careful scrutiny of 
our Davy lamps, to see them lighted and locked, 
goes on while the gear of the pit moves ; the stout 
wire band or rope starts on its downward course, 
swift as a dart, and its twin brother mounts upwards 
as fast, the one freighted with a cage of miners bound 
for the bottom, the other with a cage of coal for the 
top. We look over into the dark depth. Who ever 
could have first thought of digging such a hole as this 
to see what he could find? We cannot stop to think. 
Our foot is on the plank, and we go "down-stairs,” 
dangling at the end of a quarter of a mile of rope. 

The movement is so swift and easy that we seem to 
he standing still, while the walls of the pit rush 
upwards. It is said that one can see the stars in the 
daytime when looking up from a deep well. AVe look 


20 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


up to prove this fact, and are greeted with drops of 
black water from the sides, which give to our eyes for 
the nonce the sight of many stars. Just as we fancy 
that the bottom of the pit is about to bump against our 
cage, the pace slackens, lights appear, and unearthly 



voices and uncouth beings welcome us below and hand 
us out. We have been shot into one of nature’s vast 
coal cellars, stored countless ages ago w 7 ith fuel, in 
quantities large enough to last for ages to come. 

The temperature is warm, as is also a stream of 
black water running through the mine. The heat 

































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


21 


increases as we descend into the earth’s crust and helps 
us to understand better how the coal can be changed 
from vegetable to mineral matter. Collecting* our 
wits, we have to leap aside to let the ponies ap¬ 
proach with their trollies of coal. Yes, ponies are 
here, some fifty or more, who never see daylight, 
and only know of night by their hours of rest in 
their stables at hand. They emerge from the gloom 
of tramways laid in the tunnels and from various 
quarters, their tramp and the creak of wheels giving 
notice of their approach. With no time to lose they 
are unyoked and yoked again to empty trucks and 
go back into the darkness. 

Our first duty must be paid to the furnace, the 
"tutelary genius” of this mine. We leave gas jets 
behind and trust to the feeble glimmer of our lamps 
as we wander into the recesses of the pit. Now we 
must bend nearly double at the risk of a crick in the 
back, for the roof is very low. 

The road is dry and dusty. Right and left, drifts, 
at intervals, lead to the workings : and the coal, still 
in place as it "grows,” glistens in the walls. The 
roof is kept from falling by close massive timbers 
or walls of rock. The danger, strange to say, is 
often, not from the roof falling, but from the road¬ 
way rising. So vast is the pressure of the over- 
lying strata that the roadway, relieved by excavation, 


22 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


heaves up, and with such force, as to fracture the 
metal-rails; to snap in two the thick short trunk of a 
tree, put as a support, and soon to fill up the drift. 
The timber in a mine appears sufficient, if left there 
long enough, to make another bed of coal. Our pas- 
sage is blocked by a trap door, our guide asks us to 
wait, for the noise of wheels the other side announces 
an arrival. The door opens, and a truck of coal 
passes out, and we pass in. A rushing sound, as of 
floods of water, besets our path.' Our friendly guide 
tells us it is the air to ventilate the mine. He opens 
the door that divides the passage, and we pass 
under, and the roar of mighty water ceases. We feel, 
however, a stronger current of air setting in our own 
direction of traveling. We arc, in fact, close to the 
furnace, the sole means trusted to for the ventilation 
of this mine. The downcast current of air from the 
shaft we descended, moves along one side of the 
partition through every drift and working of the mine, 
driving the foul air and gases before it, and returns on 


the other side, driving along faster and louder as it 

7 O O 

nears the all-consuming furnace, which it feeds with 
the roar of the hot blast. 

And what a chimney shaft, over four times as high 
as Bunker Hill ! "Shall we go up it?” Surely our 

guide is poking fun at us. No ; he says he generally 
goes upstairs that way because it is warmer. It is the 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


23 


upcast shaft, with cages ascending and descending the 
same as with the downcast. We straighten our ach- 
ing backs in presence of tlie Fire King, bending low 
again in leaving, both out of respect to royalty, and be¬ 
cause we cannot well do otherwise in a three-feet seam. 

Here are pitmen and boys in free and easy costumes, 
limited as a rule to black and ragged pants, and 
sometime minus any garb but a black soot, fitting close 
to the skin. Here a stalwart miner lies sideways at 
full length with his pick, under-cutting the coal, so 
that the upper mass comes down with a run. There 
another, bent upon winning as many tubs as he can, 
has worked a dangerous distance without placing props. 
A group yonder, indulging in a few moments rest have 
put their lamps on the points of their picks, against 
orders and long to smoke, but dare not. The officer 
gives a friendly word of warning, saying to some reck¬ 
less one, " You never know when an accident may hap¬ 
pen.” The mine is treacherous and fiery. Explosions 
have cost the lives of hundreds of the miners. Remem¬ 
brances of these gives a gentle sadness of tone to the 
man’s voice, for he himself lost two fine boys in the 
last catastrophe. He takes us to the scene of death, 
now shut in from the rest of the mine. He points out 
where the poor charred bodies were found. The seams 
of coal crumble to the touch, the surface being 
charred by the fire. 


24 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


By screwing down the flame in our lamp it will 
lengthen into a needle point it there is gas in the air. 
We try it, but no gas can be found to-day. 

The time may be near at hand when electricity will 
flood all mines with the light of day. As it is, the 
safety gauge about the lamp obstructs so much of the 
light as only to make darkness visible. When there 
is much gas about, the lam}) gets tilled with flame, and 
if the gauge becomes red hot it is no longer a protec¬ 
tion, but a source of great danger. 

c c 

We ascend by the warm upcast with the same 
curious feeling that it is the pit which moves. As the 
pit sinks faster and faster, it leaves us at last atop, 

sleet seem bright 
after the blackness of darkness of hours in the coal-pit. 


where wintry mists and black drizzly 


Build up heroic lives, and all 
Be like a sheathen sabre, 

Beady to flash out at God’s call, 

O chivalry of labor ! 

Triumph and toil arc twins ; and aye 
Joy suns the cloud of sorrow ; 

And ’tis the martyrdom to-day 

Brings victory to-morrow. 

Gerald Massey. 



STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


25 



SOMETHING ABOUT GAS. 

OW many have seen, while watching the 
tire on a winter’s night, the jets of curling 
smoke bursting from a lighted coal, and 
every now and then blazing up with a 
pleasant, rushing sound. He must have been 
an intelligent man who first thought of catch¬ 
ing these jets of smoke, before they lighted, and car¬ 
rying them through pipes any distance, to light at the 






















































26 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


other end. Yet this simple idea led to illuminating 
our cities with gas. Man did not invent gas, but the 
mode of turning it to our comfort and welfare. 

It is told of the great Dr. Johnson that, when he 
was looking out of his window one evening, he saw a 
lamp-lighter go up a ladder to relight an oil-lamp that 
had just gone out; he noticed that the wick caught 
in a moment from the vapor which still rose from it. 
"Ah !” said the Doctor, in a prophetic vein, "one of 
these days London will be lighted by smoke.” In some 
coal-fields the gas escapes, and makes its way to the 
surface, where it breaks through in a never-dying 
stream of tire. Such natural gas is now brought up to 
the surface through tubes, and often used instead of 
coal or artificial gas. 

O 

Before coal-gas was used, our towns and streets were 
lighted with dull oil-lamps, hanging from cords or 
chains slung across from side to side, and our villages 
trusted solely to the moon, as the people still do in 
many towns. 

Man’s intelligence, however, is never at rest. Gas 
no longer satisfies him as an illuminator, seems 
likely to find its chief use in the future, as a means of 
warmth, to burn in our fireplaces, to the saving of the 
cost and dirt of coals, and for cooking purposes. 
With asbestos fuel, which burns brightly and throws out 
heat, without smoke, soot, dust, cinders or ashes, a gas 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


27 


stove satisfies the love of a cheerful open lire, kindled in 
a moment by turning on a jet, and put out as quickly, 
yet never consumed. Intelligence has adapted to our 
use the electric light, whose brightness, like that of the 
sun, illumines the whole atmosphere with the light of 



day, and gives a splendor to the night such as the world 
has never before seen. Just as the light of the stars, 
which are shining in the day-time even though we do not 
see them, are put out by the bright sun, so the 
electric light puts out the gas lamps ; and the genius 
of inventors, which was taxed to make gas brilliant, 





















































28 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


is now directed to reduce the intensity of the electric 
light. 

The principle of gas lighting is easy to test. It you 
till the howl of a clay pipe with coal dust, and plug it 
with clay, and then put the bowl in the tire the 



A CITY BY NIGHT. 

heat will drive out the gas through the tube or 
stem, when it can be lit as it escapes. On a large 
scale this is what is done at the gas-works. Coal is put 
into iron tubes, called retorts, the gas is driven off by 
heat, but in an impure state, being mixed with the 

















STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


29 


vapors of ammonia, tar and sulphur. It has to be put 
through a process to rid it ot impure matters which 
would dim its light. The dull gas first made was 
hardly to be compared with the clear, colorless flame 
which illumines our houses now. 

Until the gas is wanted, it is stored in the gas¬ 
holder ; this holder is in two parts, the tank, and the 
holder proper. The tank is a pit in the shape of a 



Tho Gasometer. 

cylinder which is kept rilled with water to prevent 
leakage of the gas. The holder is above the tank, and 
is filled with gas. Great care has to be taken to pre¬ 
vent explosions. These do sometimes happen despite 
caution, shaking the district for miles around and often 

7 O 

destroying life. 

The wonderful powers of coal do not end at gas. 
After the coal has been heated and the gas removed, 



























































































30 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


there is left ;i black, porous, hard, but brittle matter. 
This is called coke. The gas companies sell it for fuel. 
It makes a quick, hot lire. 

Other things produced by the manufacture of gas 
are hartshorn, ammonia, the strong-smelling coal-tar, 
from which chemists make a great many beautiful 
colors known as aniline dyes, and — would you believe 
it?—the snow-white, waxy substance called paraffine, 
which you have seen in the shape of candles. Even the 
jet ornaments you admire are made from one kind of 
coal. 

Fuel for cooking, for warmth and for gas ; fuel for 
smelting and forging metals ; fuel for the arts of life 
which depend upon boiling water, or upon dry heat ; 
fuel for the engines that drive our machines, mills and 
railway trains; fuel for other useful ends, too many 
to name, makes greater demands upon our coal-beds 
every year. 

It is due to coal that we have steam-engines to begin 
with, and that we can work them; that we can travel 
in a few hours by train, as far as we could travel in a 
week, not many years ago ; and take a voyage round 
the world in as few months as it once took years. 

Everybody gains by the saving of time, for no one 
thinks of saving time for the sake of wasting it, but 
to try and produce more of the comforts and neces¬ 
saries of life. 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


31 



PETROLEUM SPRING. 


PETROLEUM. 

[HEN the wild Indians alone lived in our 
country the only way of getting a light 
and kindling a lire was by rubbing two 
pieces of wood together. Our fore- 
athers lit their rude homes with sputtering 
tallow candles. Those of us who cannot have 
gas or electric lights can make our homes light and 
cheerful with kerosene oil or petroleum. 













32 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


This oil had been found in many parts of the United 
States for many years, but it was not until August of 
1859 that it was found in large quantities. At this 
time a boring was made at Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, and 
one thousand gallons a day ivere drawn from it for many 
weeks. The news of the discovery spread rapidly; 
thousands of persons flocked to the neighborhood in 
hopes of making a fortune by "striking oil.” 

Our wants of to-day are supplied from the north¬ 
western part of Pennsylvania, but there are rich oil¬ 
fields in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, Texas and California. 

When a spot has been decided on — " located ” as 
the prospector calls it — as a likely place to find petro¬ 
leum, a wooden framework, looking something like 
the staging put up in building a church steeple, is 
built over it. This is called a derrick , and these der¬ 
ricks are characteristic features of an American "oil¬ 
field.” In this, or more commonly a little distance 
away from it, is an engine which works the drilling- 
tools in the derrick. The hole which is drilled 
may be anywhere from ^ few hundred to two thous¬ 
and or more feet deep before oil is " struck.” It is 
usually only about eight inches wide at the top, nar¬ 
rowing to about two inches at the bottom. 

Sometimes the oil does not rise to the top of the well 
when, of course, it has to be pumped up. At other times 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


33 


it runs out at the top and so forms a flowing well.” 

© 

A flowing well is naturally more valuable than a 
"pumping well.” Various ingenious contrivances are 
used to get the sand and broken rock out of the bore¬ 
hole ; and sometimes a well has been started by explod¬ 
ing a dynamite cartridge at the bottom of the hole. 
After all the apparatus is at hand, two or three men 
do all the work of making a well. 

From the wells the petroleum is conveyed to storage 
tanks and, in the Pennsylvania region, from them 
through long lines of pipe (just as water is carried) 
to places where it is wanted. These " pipe-lines” are 
managed by large companies who pay the owners of 
the wells for the oil they take. The pipe-lines end 
either at places where the oil is loaded on the railroads 
in tank-cars — long iron cylinders — as at Tamanend 
and Williamsport, in Pennsylvania ; or at the refin¬ 
eries. One of the largest pipe-lines runs for 300 
miles from Olean in Western New York to New York 
City. 

Kerosene is made from petroleum by a process of 
purifying or refining, in the great refineries situated 
near the large cities of the Atlantic coast. Other 
products are also obtained in this process — such as 
naptha , benzine, (jamline ,— some of which are used, 
from their property of dissolving other things, — for 
cleaning goods and for making paints aud varnishes, as 


34 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


well as for jnvin^ light and heat; though for the two 
latter purposes not so safe as kerosene. Some ot the 
heavier oils obtained in this refining are used in 
machinery to lessen the friction (lubricating). From 
the ill-smelling petroleum is also made the now com¬ 
mon jelly-like ointment, vaseline. And who were the 
people who discovered so many uses for all these 
things? They were simply people, who as schoolboys 
and as men, were thoughtful and ff kept their eyes open.'' 


METALS. 

HE best known metals are gold, silver, iron, 

O 7 7 7 

lead, copper, zinc, and tin. Sir Humphrey 
Davy, the great chemist, proved that all 
the common earths and alkalies have metals 
their base, and can be reduced from the 
matrix, or earthy substance in which they are 
imbedded. These metals are elements or simple 
bodies. Some of them we have learned to extract 
cheaply, and they are much used in the arts. Others 
remain rare and costly, awating our further knowledge 
before entering into man’s service. 






STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


35 


When alloyed with copper, or tin, aluminium pro¬ 
duces a bronze, better than any other mixed metal in 
use, for ship fittings, sheathing, steam propellers, and 
for the manufacture of artillery. 

Gold and silver are called precious metals, because 
they do not corrode or waste in melting, and on account 
of their great scarcity and value. Another metal, 
platinum, is like the precious metals in these respects. 
The more common metals, but iron in particular, are 
often distinguished as the useful metals. 

Metals are spread over the whole earth ; iron being 
the oftenest met with, and gold the next. Gold is 
found native or pure, though sometimes mixed with 
silver, copper, or mercury. The common metals are 
so blended with earths, that they have to undergo a 

7 xJ 

series of transformations before they are obtained in 
their pure state, ready for man’s service and wants. 
Much knowledge, which it took many ages to gain, is 
required in the successive operations of reducing the 
ore to the state of pure metal. Iron, in particular, is 
very stubborn and difficult to treat. Its ores lay im- 
applied during the whole history of the most ancient 
nations. 

Metals form a very large part of the earth’s mass. 
It has been reckoned that one-third by weight consists 


of metallic ores, while ti 
and a higher rate of the 


ve per cent, of the lower rocks 
upper rocks, are iron. The 


36 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


water of the ocean also holds most or all of the metals 
in solution. 


Water, in fact, is the grand agent which has played 
its part in the deposit of metals, whether in vast beds 
of ironstone, or veins of other metals which fill the 
crevices of rocks — whether in small quantities widely 
diffused, or rich abundance in spots as widely apart. 

Water makes its way through the earth to its greatest 
depths, and is the cause of the ceaseless changes which 
the rocks undergo. Water filters or strains through the 
surface soil, or operates in currents beneath, under 
enormous pressure. No rock, not even the hardest 


crystal, is free from water, which appears to make its 
passage the more easily the greater the depth. It is 
met with in the deepest mines, and the hewer of stone 
is as familiar with the "quarry water ” as with the 
stone he works. An ocean of water, equal to the 
ocean which fills the great hollows of the earth’s sur- 
face, or that other ocean of vapor which fills the air, 
is absorbed by the crust of the earth as by a sponge. 
Water is the universal solvent. Give it time, heat and 
pressure, and no element can withstand its influence. 

A principle rules in nature whereby atoms, or par¬ 
ticles of a like kind, attract each other. Atoms of 
metals, held in solution by water, may travel many 
miles, before meeting with the proper conditions to 
unite with their kind. 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


37 



GOLD. 

HIS precious metal is mined in every quarter 
of the o-lobe. It is found in most of the 
countries of Europe, most of all in Russia. 
Various regions of Asia and the East Indian 
outs furnish further supplies, and large quan¬ 
ta come Irom North, South and Central 
America. But California and Australia have, in the 
immensity of their gold productions, overshadowed 
that of the rest of the world, either in ancient or 



















38 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


modern days. Gold is discovered in the sand and 
mud of rivers ; it has been, by the action of the water, 
brought down from its home where it formed in the 

C 


mountains. Often it is found in veins or lodes in 
quartz rocks, with iron pyrites. Gold is never found 
in the oldest rocks like tin and copper. 

It takes the form either of grains or markets or solid 

o CO 


masses of metal. In any case it is mixed with or 
encrusted with earth and alloy. The earthy part can 
be removed by water. In old times in California this 
used to be done in pans or in what the miners called a 
" cradle " — a box on rockers and open at one end. 
But this slow process is now done away with: 
hydraulic engines and sluices taking the place of the 
first rude implements. If the gold is embedded in 
quartz the rock must be crushed to powder before 
washing. This crushing is done in different ways in 
different countries, but most of the quartz of Califor¬ 
nia is reduced by a machine called the stamp mill. 
When at last the heavy metal is crushed and washed 
free from earth it is further purified by being treated 
with mercury or quicksilver : this mercury is after¬ 
ward driven off by heat, leaving a mass of spongy 
gold behind which is afterward run into ingots or 
bars. 


Gold plays an important part in history. There 
must have been lavish stores in the days of the early 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY, 


39 


oriental empires, whose extravagancies both profane 
and sacred histories picture. Still more must have 
been in Rome. Lucullus could give a banquet to 
Caesar and Pompey and spend a whole fortune upon it. 



In olden times there was great abundance of the pre¬ 
cious metal in Asia, and many legends and tales about 

it. 

We read of the golden fleece and the Argonauts ; 
of the gold of Ophir ; of the golden sands of Pactolus, 
and the fable of the rich King Midas. There are 


















40 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


traces of ancient workings and of large stores of gold 
in Egypt; and gold work was put in the tombs of the 
Pharaohs. Beautiful ornaments of gold were also 
stored in the tombs of the Etruscans. Troy had abun¬ 
dance of very pure and easily-worked gold. 

Arabia was the El Dorado of ancient days with 
twenty-two gold mines. Africa was rich in metal. 
Quartz veins are met with in the interior which lead 
us to believe that gold-mining may again become an 
active industry in the Dark Continent. 

In January, 1848, gold was discovered in California. 
The news spread over both hemispheres. Excited 
multitudes poured in from Mexico, the South Ameri¬ 
can coast, the Atlantic States, and even from the 
Sandwich Islands. San Francisco, a station of a few 
inhabitants, sprang in a few years to a splendid city of 
50,000 people. Its harbor was tilled with the fleets 
of all nations, and the State of California counted three 
millions of souls. A mania for gold seized young and 
old, to the neglect of all other industries. Food, 
clothing and the common necessaries of life rose to 
fabulous prices. Gold so fixed men’s thoughts, that 
the rich mines of silver and cinnabar (ore of quick¬ 
silver), of plumbago or blacklead, of manganese, cop¬ 
per, iron and coal were thought nothing of, and passed 
over. After a few years, the gold fever yielded to 
healthier industry, and all the resources of California 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


41 


began to be wrought. Tillage of the soil was resumed, 
and the finest grains and fruits were raised. Farm- 
ing now flourishes, and the golden harvests of this 
grand region prove a source of wealth, less variable 
than the washings of its blue clay or the crushings of 
its quartz reef. 

In 1851 a rush was made from California to the rich 
fields of Australia. Mr. Hargreaves, who had been 
in California, was the first to observe the resemblance 
which the rocky regions of Australia bore to the gold 
fields he had just left. A month or two of research 
paid him with good finds of gold. A native 
shepherd soon after found a solid mass of gold, 
and wide fields were quickly worked by myriads 
of diners. 

Australia, like California, has recovered from her 
gold excitement, and while her settlements have grown 
to the size and energy of an empire, her fields of 
grain yield returns richer than her harvests of gold ; 
and her golden fleece, from millions upon millions of 
the finest sheep, is less fabulous than that of Jason 
and the Argonauts. 

o 

In times long gone by, a sheep could be bought for 
a few pence, and laborers worked for a penny a day; 
that was because gold was so scarce that a great deal 
had to be given in exchange for it. 

Now that gold is more plentiful, wages have risen 


42 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


and our daily wants cost many times as much as in the 
days of its scarcity. 

Gold is nearly as soft as lead, and so easily spreads 
out under the hammer, that a single grain may he 
extended over fifty-six square inches ; and so thin that 
twenty-five thousand folds of the leaf go to an inch of 



thickness. This quality is called malleability; the 
man who thins out the leaf is called the gold-beater. 
The gold leaf is used by the picture-frame gilder, the 
writer of gold letters, and for ornamental work in our 
homes. Gold has another quality ; it is ductile , that 
is, it can be drawn out into fine wire. A grain is 











































































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


43 


sometimes stretched to a length of live hundred feet 
for the tine wire used in making "old lace. 

Because it possesses these qualities, it is above all 
other metals adapted for money. In some countries 
of Europe gold is the only moifey ; silver and bronze 
being coined as mere tokens to represent the fractions 
of the gold coin. 

But all the gold is not made into money. Science, 
art and commerce make new and large demands upon 
the supply every year, while bills of exchange and 
bank checks lessen our need of coin. The amount of 
gold, therefore, coined at the mint into money is only 
a very small part of the gold produced. 

The minting or coining of gold is kept closely in the 
hands of the government. 

The building where the coining is done is called the 
Mint. 

The Mint has always been one of the sights of 
Philadelphia. It is hard to believe that the great cru¬ 
cibles ot molten metals, that come one after another 
so rapidly from the glowing furnace, contain real gold ; 
that the heavy yellow ingots piled up like bricks can 
be the same precious metal cooled down. Then when 
these ingots are drawn through the rolling mills into 
strips of ribbon cut into lengths and carted oil* in 
truckfuls, again it is hard to realize that a fortune 
goes with each truckful; a fortune so large it would 


44 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


be enough and to spare not only for our own lives but 
for our children and grand-children. 

The lengths of gold will next be cut into disks or 
blank coins ; next they will be put through a machine 
which will roll the (*dges and produce a rim ; then 



THE MINT. 

comes the stamping them with the design and their 
value. Before a single coin can start from the Mint 
on its travels about the world, it has to be assayed , that 
is, tested, to see if its weight is exactly right. If a 
coin is lacking in the slightest part of a grain, it is 
detected at once. 
































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


45 



PERUVIAN SILVER MINE. 


SILVER. 

ILVEII is the whitest and most lustrous 
of all the metals, as well as the most 
malleable. Its grain is so close and clings 
so firmly, that beaten silver spreads out into 
leaf two-and-a-half times thinner than that 
of gold. The metal is ductile, too, and the 
wire, drawn out into marvelous finenesses in ore at 

ZD 















46 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


demand for silver lace. When pure, silver is a soft 
metal, but hardens when with alloy. 

Veins and masses of it occur all over the earth. In 
Mexico the richest workings are in connection with 
a single vein which is one-hundred and fifty feet wide. 
It is rarely found pure, and then in only small quanti¬ 
ties. In nearly all silver ore there is some gold, 
and in nearly all gold ore, some silver; silver is often 
found with lead, copper, mercury and cobalt. 

Different countries use different ways of extracting 
the pure silver from the ore. The people of Mexico, 
of Peru and Chili use the following methods : 

c 


The pounded ore is ground into a tine paste with 
water ; this paste, after having been allowed to dry up 
a little in air, is placed on a stone door with a quantity 
of salt and the two are trodden together by mules. 
The next day is added a kind of sulphate of copper, 
also mercury, and the mules are kept going until the 
silver is changed as far as possible into amalgam ; this 
takes from fifteen to forty-five days. 

After the amalgam is made the next thing is to drive 
out the mercury ; this is done by means of heat and 
the remainder, by a refining process, becomes pure 
silver. 


The chief silver-producing countries are the United 
States, Mexico, Chili and Peru. Mt. Potosi in Boli¬ 
via, 2697 feet above the level of the plain of the city 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


47 


of Potosi, has been mined up to within one hundred 
and twenty-five feet of the summit and seems to he 
almost a mass of silver ore. 

Ancient history abounds in references to the wealth 
of monarchs in silver as well as in gold. Spain, in 
the age of the Phoenicians, was a silver mine. 

The natives, were enslaved and set to work in the 
silver mines, in the same manner as, many centuries 
after, the Spaniards served the Indians of the New 
W orld. In the present day Spain possesses rich 
stores of silver ore, which the indolence of the people 
leaves almost unworked. 

Before the 13th century old German mines were 
again opened and new ones were found. Much more 
silver was produced in Germany than now. Silver 
became so abundant, that the merchants were envied 
in other parts of Europe, for they used silver in their 
kitchens and households , as elsewhere people usedpewter . 

Pure silver is too soft to make durable coins or ves¬ 
sels which shall be liirht and firm. This is remedied 
by alloying it with a little copper. Almost all of 
what we call " silver” articles are formed of this alloy. 

The <rreat use for silver, apart from coin, is for plate. 
A great deal of silver is now used in electro-plating, 
so that silver plated articles are now enjoyed in tens 
of thousands of homes where solid silver could never 
be hoped for. 


48 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY, 




COPPER. 

HE baser or common metals, as all but sil- 
ver and gold are called, make up in quan¬ 


tity for what they lack in quality. The 
United States is well supplied with metallic 
treasures, both in beds, as those of iron¬ 
stone, and in veins or lodes, as those of copper 


and lead. 

Copper, from the Latin Cuprum , so called from its 
prevalence in Cyprus, is one of the most widely 








































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


49 


spread ot all metals. It is all the more useful for 
being capable of combining with other metals, thus 
forming compounds of more importance than pure 
copper. Brass, bronze, gun-metal, bell-metal, sheath¬ 
ing, white copper and German silver are all alloys of 
copper, with more or less of tin, nickel or zinc. Cop¬ 
per is also used to harden gold and silver. 

Copper ores are found in the Ural Mountains, in 
Great Britain, Sweden, Germany and France. South 
America, however, ranks first in copper supplies. 
Masses of almost pure metal, many tons in weight, 
are scattered over the pathless Andes, useless, because 
there are no means of carrying it to the sea-ports. 

The metallic veins, almost without exception, run 
east and west; descend to unknown depths, and dip 
or incline their planes of surface north and south. 
This, of course makes easier the work' of hunting for 
metal; it also leads us to think that magnetic action 
has had something to do with the deposit. These 
veins look like the cracks in clay soil, split open by 
the heat of the summer suns, and are tilled sometimes 
with metallic ores. 

The ore, as it comes to us, is in the form called crude 
copper, from which much of the earthy matter has 
been crushed out, in order to reduce the weight and 
bulk. Russian malachite, a beautifully-veined green 
marble capable of splendid polish, is an ore of copper. 


50 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


It is often worked in small pieces as a gem, and slabs 
of it are sometimes dressed and polished. Copper, 
when struck with a hard object, gives out a rich metal¬ 
lic sound. Copper-smiths and boiler-makers ply their 
craft amid a deafening tintinnabulation of hammers. 
The beating of the metal gives strength and a closer 
grain ; and as the beaten plate can be riveted with any 
other metal the malleable heads of the copper rivets 
spread out under the blows of the hammer and secure 
a good fastening. 

Cooking vessels of copper are in great request. 
Such utensils have to be kept extremely clean in order 
to avoid verdigris and other poisonous salts which you 
have often seen on old copper, and which, without this 
care, form upon the surface and eat into the metal. 
As an extra safeguard, copper pots and pans are 
coated with tin, silver or enamel. 

Copper ore is troublesome to reduce. Smelting 
includes many and long operations of wasting and 
melting the ore, and refining and toughening the 

o J O O o 

metal. 

Copper was certainly one of the first metals subdued 
by man. Combined with the tin which the Phoenicians 
obtained from Cornwall, it became the brass of the 
ancients. This was not the same compound metal 
which we call brass, and which is made from a mixture 
of copper and zinc, but Avas more properly bronze, 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


51 


capable ol taking a keen edge, suited to cutting instru¬ 
ments and weapons of war. Corinth was famous for 
its works in brass, and at the destruction of that city, 
so many statues were melted, that the streets, it is 
said, ran with molten brass, and the compound was 
long afterward celebrated as Corinthian metal. 

The Colossus of Rhodes was an image of bronze, 
weighing 320 tons, striding across, from bank to bank, 
of an inlet of the sea, and under the legs of which ships 
could sail with their masts standing. This Colossus 
was thrown down by an earthquake. Bronze was for 
many ages employed by the Egyptians, Greeks, 
Romans, and the Chinese. It was this alloy which 
gave the name to the Bronze Period ; the age between 


the earliest historical division of time, called the Stone 
Period, and that of the Iron Period, which came after. 

Bell-metal and gun-metal are varieties of bronze. 
They are the foundation of the flourishing crafts of 
the bell and the cannon-founder. Applied to artistic 
work, these alloys have produced a great many orna¬ 
ments such as chandeliers, fountains, and statues. 
Brass, properly so called, is more in use than any 
metal except iron. Brass-founders and braziers were 
renowned for their art workmanship in the Middle 
Ages. Their church fittings, funeral brasses, and 
monuments are not excelled with all our present skill 
and knowledge. 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY, 


o 


9 



BRASS AND BRONZE WORK, 

Every one of the compounds of copper is 
put to a variety of uses. Bronze is made 
with one part only of tin. With two parts 
of tin it becomes sun-metal, tough enough 
to hear the strain of tiring cannon of heavy 
calibre. A third proportion of tin gives it 
fluidity for the casting of bells. A little lead added 
produces a soft compound, that can be cut with a 
sharp tool. 

Brass-founding is, likewise, but the first in an almost 


























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


53 


endless series of arts, each of which has its own his¬ 
tory. Brass is malleable, tenacious, and ductile. 
Bi ’ass plates are rolled, tubes soldered, and wire 
drawn, each by a distinct trade. Brass-finishers, 
fitters, engravers, pin, thimble, and button-makers, 
lacquerers, and artists in brass, and many others, 
depend for their livelihood and usefulness to society 
upon brass, and the excellent qualities which the com¬ 
pound metal posseses. White metals, upon copper as 
a basis, and serving the purposes of silver, with which 
they are plated, call into being many extra divisions 
of labor. 

If you should some day make a visit to Waterbury, 
Connecticut, you would find there one of the oldest 
established brass manufactories in our country and 
one of the largest in the world. 

From side to side of the great foundry building runs 
a bank of small, low furnaces, twenty-one on each 
side. What monstrous dinner can be preparing? 
Over the fires are forty-two kettles or crucibles, each 
holding more than a hundred pounds. We peer in. 
The smoking caldrons are full of copper ore from Lake 
Superior. Each crucible is covered with charcoal and 
fitted with a sliding cover at the top. Almost all the 
"casting,” which is the name given to the melting, etc., 
of the brass, we shall see here, is the making of small 
slabs, flat bars and hollow cylinders. 


54 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


When the metal is properly melted, the men tip it 
out of the crucibles into iron moulds. 

Here is a picture of the room where the slabs for 
sheet brass and the flat bars for wire are rolled. 

The copper taken out of the moulds, as soon as it is 
cooled, has rough jagged edges. These must be 



-Lilli I ll 


ROLLING BRASS PLATES. 


trimmed ; and with what sort of an instrument do you 
suppose it is done? With shears , so immense, that 
one great arm of them, working up and down, weighs 
a ton. Of course no hand could work such enormous 
scissors, so they are moved by powerful levers. 

The thick bars and slabs of brass are trimmed by 
them as easily as you can cut a paper kite. The bars 
















































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


55 


are first passed through one set of rollers, then another, 
until the sheets are thin enough for use. 

Between the rollings, the bars and slabs are annealed, 
that is, laid in a space between two fires until they are 
red-hot. Then they are drawn out to cool slowly in 
the air. This heating is to make them soft and easier 
to work upon as they were at first. 

Just before the last rolling, the surface “of the brass 
plates are scratched over and cleaned, " over-hauled ” 
the workmen say, so that they shall come out of the 
last rolling as perfect as possible. 

In another room the bars are drawn out into wires 
for thousands of uses. 

For the seamless tubes the metal is poured into 
moulds in the shape of a cylinder, and having a core. 
The cores make the moulds hollow. These hollow 
cylinders are put through one drawing machine after 
another until they are the required size. 

Many of the gas, steam and water pipes are of cast, 
wrought or malleable iron, but brass, too, is used. 

At Bridgeport, Connecticut, there is a foundry 
where every variety of valves and fittings are made. 
Very likely the faucets in your home or school-house 
were made at this very foundry. 

Look at the faucet a moment and you will see that 
it is made up of small pieces fitted together with the 
greatest nicety. It took many skillful workmen to 
make each of those pieces, and to polish and join them. 


56 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



ZINC. 

HIS is a bluish-white metal. Its existence 
has been known from early ages, but 
extracting it from the ore has only been 
practised from the beginning of the 
eighteenth century. It is never found in a 
pure state. Zinc ore goes under the com¬ 
mercial name of spelter. Three-fourths of the 
product is raised in Germany and Silesia. Belgium, 
Sweden and the United States also produce it. Two 













































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


57 


hundred years ago, the metal was brought to Europe 
from India. Now much larger shipments are sent 
from Europe to Asia, and to the remotest parts of the 
globe. 

Zinc has become so important all over the world 
that it ranges, among the useful metals, only next to 
iron as a national treasure in its cheapness and the 
many purposes for which it is used. 

Zinc is not very malleable at its natural temperature, 
but when heated it can be rolled into sheets or plates, 
and be drawn into wire. Zinc is of great value 
because it can bear for a long time exposure to the air 
without change or rusting. This makes it a good and 
cheap substitute for lead in lining tanks ; for house 
gutters and rain pipes. It bears casting well, and is 
six times cheaper for statues and ornamental scrolls 
than brass or bronze. 

Zinc plates are often preferred to the dearer brass 
for the inscriptions on shop fronts and doors ; they 
take the place of copper and steel for photo-engraving 
of pictures and of music, and of stone for lithographic 
printing. 

Zinc, like tin, penetrates iron so completely as to 
form plates and wire, said to be galvanized, which 
are strong as iron, yet defended from rust almost as 
well as if pure zinc. The plates are often corrugated 
or wrinkled — that is, shaped in ridges and furrows, 


58 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


a process that adds to their strength, and the plates 
are riveted with zinc nails. 

The wire does us service as garden netting, but 
far beyond this in importance is its application to 
the electric telegraph. Zinc wires stretch over the 
houses, and from post to post along our railways, for 
thousands of miles, carrying our messages with the aid 
and speed of lightning. 

Two of the compounds of zinc are of great industrial 
value. By its union with copper, it produces brass, 
an alloy which is applied in more ways than either of 
the metals of which it is compounded. Zinc-white is 
an oxide of the metal, resulting 1 from its blending with 
oxygen, which takes away entirely its metallic appear¬ 
ance, and changes it into a substance as white as 
milk. Mixed with oils, zinc-white is used by painters 
instead of the poisonous white-lead, or oxide of lead, 
the fumes of which cause the workmen to sutler from a 
painful complaint, known as painter’s colic. 

Preparations of zinc are of great value in medicine, 
and we could hardly do without the apparatus and 
instruments of science with which it furnishes us. 



STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


59 



LEAD. 

EAD ore, in which is often found silver, is 
abundant, too, in every division of the 
earth. When melted or when freshly 
cut, it is bright and shining like silver, 
but it soon tarnishes. Lead is the heaviest and 
one of the softest ot baser metals. It is mal¬ 
leable and ductile, but not to such a degree as other 
metals. 



































60 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


Lead ore goes through the usual operations of pound¬ 
ing and washing to get rid of the earthy parts, before 
going into the smelting furnace. This furnace is so 
built that the flame is made to beat back upon the 
surface of the lead, hence it is called a reverberatory 
furnace. 

The roasting is done by a gentle heat at first in 
order to drive oft’the sulphur, then the heat is raised 
and the liquid metal flows out. 

The melted lead pours into an iron pan. The 
impurities, being lightest, float on the top and are 
skimmed off. Then the clear metal is ladled into 
iron moulds, and cools down into pigs of lead. Sheet 
lead is now produced by the rolling mill. The sheet 
is then folded up like a bale of cloth. Pressed still 
thinner to the thickness of a leaf, it is called lead-foil, 
a vast quantity of which is used in China and India for 
lining tea-chests. 

Pewter may be said to be an alloy of lead and tin ; 
sometimes small quantities of copper and zinc are 
added. Before modern pottery gave us cheaper and 
better wares, pewter platters gleamed on kitchen 
shelves now laden with earthern plates and dishes of 
every color and design. By adding antimony still 
greater hardness is gained, and the alloy is known as 
Britannia metal. It is then fashioned into tea and coffee¬ 
pots, dish-covers and salvers which, when polished, are 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


61 


hard to tell from silver. Thousands of operatives in 
England earn good wages by making these ornaments 
for our tables. A similar compound is used for 
printer’s types and stereotype plates. 

Solder, type metal, and the poisonous white-lead, 
are compounds of lead. Two parts of lead to one of 
tin makes the plumber’s solder for making joints and 
unions in lead pipings. Soft solder is made of two 
parts tin and one of lead. The soldering-iron or 
tool for cementing is a hit or tongue of copper, fixed 
in a short shaft of iron. 

Copper is chosen to melt the fusible solder, because 
copper retains its heat for a long time ; the solder is 
still more readily made to flow and spread, by a flux of 
powdered rosin and borax sprinkled over the work. 
Soft solder and soldering-iron are ever at the hand of 
the brazier, the tinman and the travelling tinker, who 
could not get on without them. A neater plan of 
soldering with the blowpipe, for finer work, does away 
with the soldering-iron altogether. 


The work in lead, after it is in the shape of sheet- 
lead and lead pipe, belongs to the department of the 
plumber, who employs it for roofing, for cisterns and 
for lining. Occasionally, where the traffic or friction 
of many feet is great, such as office passages and 
stairs, the sheet of lead is unrolled and laid as a 
carpet. Shot is made by pouring melted lead through 


G 2 


STOKIES OF INDUSTRY. 


a sieve, from a great height into the water under¬ 
neath. Tn the descent, the shot becomes globular, 
on the same principal as drops of rain assume that 

r 

form in falling. The idea, so it is said, came to the 



mind of the inventor in a dream, and he first tested 
the suggestion from a tower. It is more likely that 
the thought had been working in his mind a good 
while before the lucky dream put it into shape. Lofty 
shot towers are now well known objects in various 

































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


63 



A TIN MINE. 



TIN. 

IN is rather a scarce metal. It is found in 
Cornwall and Devonshire, England; in 
Germany, Bohemia and Hungary, in 
Europe; in Chili, Mexico and the United 
States in America ; in Malacca and Banca in 
Asia. 


English tin is 

C 

Banca is nearly, 


the best in quality, though that from 
if not quite, as pure. The tin mines 






64 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


and smelting works of Cornwall are so numerous, as 
to form a marked feature of that ancient and interest¬ 
ing county. 

O ^ 


Tin ore is worked in Australia, and lodes of mar¬ 
velous richness have been found in the Wild River 
range of the same country. Tasmania is famous for 


its rich deposits. 

Tin ore occurs in two conditions — that of tin¬ 
stone, in veins, combined with other metals, and of 
stream-tin, brought by local streams from the neigh- 
boring rocks, and deposited in the river mud or allu¬ 
vial soil. By roasting, smelting and refining, the ores 
are converted into metal, and run into pigs— the tin¬ 
stone yielding bar or block-tin, and the stream ore a 
purer form called grain-tin. The smelting and refining 
of tin is easy compared with copper, and is done, as 
we have seen, on the spot where it is found. Stream- 
tin has a higher value than the bar or block-tin, pro¬ 
duced from other ores. 


Tin is so malleable, that leaf or foil, less-than the 
thousandth part of an inch in thickness, easily rolls 
out. The foil is of service in many ways, from folding 
sweets, tobaccos, and other simple commodities, 
requiring to be kept cool: the lining of tea-chests and 
work-boxes, to coating Leyden jars and electrical 
glasses ; and aiding in the researches of science and 
philosophy. Tin bends easily, and with a queer, 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


65 


crackling sound, unlike that of any other metal. It 
alloys with many of the metals, making them more 
brittle. 

Tin plate, or iron coated with tin, is the most use¬ 
ful form of this metal. Thin iron is dipped into tanks 



FORCING TH 
PLATES 


ANNEALING PURNACE 


POL I SHI i 


PLATE 

WORKS 


of melted tin; in a short time, the tin, like zinc, has 
eaten its way into the iron and lo ! there is a new 
metal, having the strength ol iron and all the bright¬ 
ness and cleanliness of tin. 

This tin-plate is in great tavor. The tin-plate 
worker, with a few simple tools, such as shears, mal- 





























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


66 


let, hammer, steel heads, wooden blocks, soldering- 
iron and swages, frames a countless number of articles 
mostly for kitchen work, and at so cheap a rate the 
poorest families can afford them. 

You might know, if you should notice that old tin 
dipper, thrown long ago into the rubbish heap, that tin 
ware is really iron. See, the bright tin has wholly 
disappeared, and nothing is left of the shiny dish but a 
piece of rusty old iron. 

Did you ever see cooking vessels of iron or copper 
coated with tin? That is to protect them from acids 
and rust. 

Tin was used in times so long ago that Homer put it 
in the breastplate of Agamemnon and in the greaves 
of Achilles. 


Ho, all who labor, all who strive, 

Ye wield a lofty power ; 

Do with your might, do with your strength 
Fill every golden hour ! 

4 / 

The glorious privilege to do 
Is liian’s most noble dower. 

O, to your birthright and yourselves, 

To your own souls be true ! 

A weary, wretched life is theirs 
Who have no work to do. 



STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


67 



IRON MINE. 


IRON. 

SlD you ever think, when you were driving 
^ nails into a piece of wood or when you 
have picked up a "lucky” horse-shoe on 
your way to school, what we should do 

without this hard, strong metal ? 

It makes, equally well, a needle and a gun ; a pen 
and an armor-plated ship ; the hair-spring of a watch 
and a steam engine; a bead and a bridge; a tiny 
spangle and a mighty anchoi. 























68 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


The same ore furnishes the cannon and bomb, the 
sword and the plough-share ; the chisel and the chain. 
Most of us know by "bitter” experience that it is used 
in medicines. It has been well said that iron and coal 
are kings of the earth. 

Iron is of a bluish-white color, and is very brilliant 

when polished. It is harder than most other metals, 

and increases in hardness when changed into steel. 

Almost every mineral contains some iron ; all over the 

world it is found, but the United States has a chance 

for an iron industry, unexcelled by that of any other 

land. In our countrv the sixteen States in which ores 

•/ 

of iron are found most abundantly, arranged in order 
of their productiveness, are: Pennsylvania, Michigan, 
New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Mobile, Alabama, 
Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, 
Massachusetts, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Connec¬ 
ticut. 


The three most common ores are : 


Magnetite: 


r 






black, 

hard enough to scratch glass, 
when powdered, black, 
magnetic. 


Hematite: 






dull red or shiny black, 
may be scratched by a knife, 
except when black, 
powder always reddish, 
not magnetic. 






STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


69 


r 


Brown Hematite: < 

V 


yellowish, or dark brown, 
stratched by a knife, 
powder yellow or brown, 
not magnetic. 

O 


Sometimes the iron mine is just a hugh ditch ; then 
it is called an open ermine. At other times openings 
called shafts are dug like well-holes, straight down¬ 
ward ; from the bottom or sides of these shafts tunnels 
called drifts are made in different directions ; these 
drifts are what are called underground mines. The 
ore loosened by the miners with pick-axes or by blast¬ 
ing, is drawn out of the mine and sent to the furnace 
to be smelted. All iron ores go through processes of 
reduction. The more impure they may be, the more 
work must be done to rid them of the carbonic acid, 
water and combustible matters. This is done by 
roasting. To produce foundry or cast iron, layers of 
roasted ore, of fuel, and of limestone, are wheeled in 
barrows and toppled over, one upon another, into the 
kiln, until tilled to the top. Then the hot blast is 
applied, and the rest of the earthy matters, with the 
oxygen of the ores, is set free, while the melted iron 
sinks to the bottom, where it collects, until a plug or 
sluice is lifted, when the metal runs off in a stream of 
fluid fire. The main channel into which it is cast is 
called a sow, and the smaller sidings are called pigs, 




70 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


from a fancied resemblance to 


that animal with a litter 


of young ones. 

Sow and pig iron are of three qualities. The best 
is grey iron ; the second mottled, and the third white. 
These qualities and consequent values are derived, as 



A SCENE IN THE IRON COUNTRY. 


much from the fuel and mode of smelting, as from the 
character of the ores. Foundry iron needs no further 
preparation for castings, the best quality running into 
the most delicate and beautiful tracery. Cast iron is 
brittle and breaks under the hammer. In order to 






STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


71 


convert it into wrought, bar, forged, or malleable iron, 
it has to be refined by remeltimr with coke or char- 
coal ; this process drives off any oxygen and carbon 
which may have been left, and brings it to the state of 
fine metal, losing about a tenth in weight. The 

7 o o 

process is completed by a puddler, at a like cost in 
weight of metal. Then the blooms or globular masses 
from the puddling are forged under the heavy steam- 
hammer, passed through rollers, drawn out into bars, 
cut into lengths, and formed into bundles; again 
brought to a welding heat, once more hammered and 

O O 

rolled into rounded, squared, or fluted shapes, ready 
for the market . 

If we want to see and understand what labor really 
means, how the wealth of the country depends upon 
it, and how mind can direct the hands, we must visit 
our iron-works and watch our iron-workers. 

A region better fitted to wake up "dozy” folks, or 
to delight people who love wonders, cannot be found 
than the iron fields of our country. To view the 
fires of such a field by midnight, when the flames glare 
against the dark sky is a strange, grand sight. 

Enter one of the great iron-works and feel the red 
lava slag close enough to scorch your face. 

See ! here real is iron kneaded and rolled as easily 
as Jennie kneads the bread at home ; here iron is 
cut like clay, and twisted like wax; red hot it is 


72 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


poured into moulds. Livid rivers, from the fur¬ 
nace, How in a cascade of lire to till large pots brim¬ 
ful, and to be hurried otf by men flitting hither and 
thither and looking like demons in the red glare. 

Can this be iron ? Plate upon plate of every thick¬ 
ness, but no thinness, spread out for causeways or 



piled up in dozens, are before, behind and upon either 
side. Pillars and posts are scattered about, heavy 
and massive. Iron, iron, iron everywhere. We pick 
our steps in and out among the lengths and breadths 
of metal. Ridges of glowing metal are here, long 
stretches of framework there ; the loose bones, before 



























STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


73 


being jointed into some mighty machine — liquid it 
may 1 >e, white-hot, red-hot, black-hot, dull, gray, or 
cold. 

Iron works upon iron. Here are steam-boilers 
sputtering, and engines cutting, sawing, hammering, 
planing, slotting, sliding, drilling, turning metal. We 
witness a scene without equal in the realms of indus¬ 
try. It makes one's eyes open wide, to see tools play 
upon iron as if it were an easy yielding thing. Re¬ 
sistance appears no more to be thought of than if it 
was India-rubber or gutta-percha. While we can 
count one, two, three, a row of rivet-holes, an inch 
wide, for a steam-boiler, are punched in a thick sheet of 
iron, the well-tempered punch passes through the solid 
iron as though nothing stood in its way. That there 
is a pressure, you may be sure, for each punch gives 
a gun-shot report, and picking up one of the boy’s 
"nickers,” fallen from the hole, you drop it in a 
hurry. It blisters your fingers. Cutting it has made 
it too hot to hold ; yet cutting from tiie cold iron 
takes less than a second. 


On the summit of a blast furnace, a hundred feet 
high, the sweltering heat can hardly be borne as it rises 
from the sandy gridiron below, into whose narrow 
gullies the red-hot metal runs, from the open sluice at 
the foot of the iron tower. Yet men learn to sustain 
the fiery heat, which overhangs the white-hot plate, 


74 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


the "wagon” filled with ten tons of molten steel, and 
the moulds into which the pig iron crawls crimson-red 
from the furnace. In the rolling-mills, huge blocks 
of white-hot metal, beautiful with greenish vapor-like 
flame, are hauled about as sailors drag a chain cable ; 



BLAST FURNACE EXTENSION. 


thrust into the jaws of the rolling-machine, passed 
many times to and fro, and finally brought out as 
armor-plates or steel rails. Use toughens the skin 
of the swarthy workers, who stand by the blinding 
metal, overhang it, or jump across, and dodge about 
it, while the crimson splendor shines from their wet 













STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


75 


faces and half naked bodies, and they themselves look 
like shapes of tire. 

Now come into the factory among the forges and 
smiths. Everything here is black but the glanc- 

C/ O C 

ing tires. Even so crude a thing as a forge lias a 
symmetrical beauty of its own, and here are, say, twenty 
at work. Anvils cover the ground. Three of the men 

c 

• / 

take a red "heat" from the tire and belabor it with 
sledges. Round and round overhead the sledges fly ; 
one after another they crash down upon the anvil like 
a peal of church bells ; each hammer-man measures its 
distance by his eve and the force by the smaller ham- 
mer of the firemen, which rings in between their blows. 

You think perhaps the man who directs the work 
hammers his anvil more than lie hammers the iron, 
but the hammer-man knows then* is a meaning in it. 
When the single or double tap, or the long ring is 
given on the leader’s anvil, each hammer-man knows 
whether to give a weak or strong blow. 

o o 

Now the "heat” is otf to the fire again and we can 
drop our anxiety for the mens’ heads. It did seem as 
though they could not escape those sledges which 
whizzed close in their ears. So precise, however, is 
the practice, that a good hammer-man never misses his 
mark by half an inch. 

Here are the riveters at work, bolting together the 
iron sheets of a steam boiler, or the massive plates 


76 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


of a huge ship's hull. Hammers, striking by the 
hundred, keep up a cling and a clang that forbid 
speech. As a city is built, one brick at a time, so a 
boiler or a hull draws nearer completion with every 
driven bolt. Leaning backward and sending well- 



directed aim, they play a duet with heavy hand-ham¬ 
mers upon the red bolt just drawn from the forge. 
With the skill and force of Old Thor, they drive it 
home into the hole punched for it by the machine 
whose miracles of punching we saw a while ago 
Labor it is in the true sense, heavy, hard, manual 


























































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 77 

labor with an end in view, and that end human welfare . 
Nothing else is properly labor. 


MUSIC OF LABOR. 

T HE banging of the hammer, 

The whirling of the plane, 

The crashing of the busy saw, 

The creaking of the crane, 

The ringing of the anvil, 

The grating of the drill, 

The clattering of the turning lathe. 
The whirling of the mill, 

The buzzing of the spindle, 

The rattling of the loom, 

The puffing of the engine, 

The fan’s continual boom, 

The clipping of the tailor’s shears, 
The driving of the awl — 

These sounds of honest industry 
I love — I love them all! 

The clinking of the magic type, 
The earnest talk of men, 

The toiling of the giant press, 

The scratching of the pen, 

The bustling of the market man 
As he hies him to the town, 

The halloo from the tree-top 
As the ripened fruit comes down, 



78 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


The busy sound of thrashers 
As they cleave the ripened grain, 
The hnsker’s joke and catcli of glee 
’Neath the moonlight on the plain, 
The kind voice of the dairyman, 

The shepherd’s gentle call — 

These sounds of honest industry 
I love — I love them all! 


BITS OF KING IRON’S HISTORY. 



HE stores of iron ore are not a new or 
recent gift of Nature. The iron was in 
the rocks for ages before our land was 
peopled. In England the smelting of iron 
succeeded that of tin. The Romans practised 
the art. The Saxons neglected mining of every 
kind, vet we are told that at Hastings, Harold’s horse- 
soldiers were cased in armor. 

Mining, for centuries, was performed with hammers 
and wedges, rather than what we now understand by 
mining. The works were conducted on the sides of 
hills, where the natural drainage answered for remov¬ 
ing the water that collects in a mine. Adits, or pas¬ 
sages, were driven into the rock, following the veins, 
as tar as was safe, and then the mine was forsaken. 






STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


79 


Shafts and lifting machines, and adits driven under¬ 
ground to the places of working, in after periods, 
increased the yield of ores ; while larger furnaces, 
with plugs to run the metal off, turned out greater 
quantities of pig iron or other metal. 

The wars and manners of mediaeval times <rave 
great scope to the skill of the iron workers. Great 
pains were bestowed by the sword-smiths and armor- 



TIORPF-STTOFTC. 

ers upon their work, some of which has been kept 
until now, and cannot be excelled. 

Lock-smiths and ornamental iron-workers ol those 
days made bolts, bars and bosses for the church doors. 

The first horse-shoer lived in the Middle ages; 
before his time horses were shod with leather. As 
new highways were made, farmer’s wagons, never 
thought of when the roads were few and bad, brought 




































80 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


the wheel-wright and coach-smith forward with their 
need of iron. 

Without the fond no- of iron, Pascal, who lived in 
the seventeenth century, would not have had the idea 
of a wheelbarrow. 

When he invented a wheelbarrow to save the toil 
of carrying heavy baskets, he little thought that his 
humble invention was the germ of the world’s great 
wheel traffic of to-day. Iron gave birth to traffic on 

CD 

wheels ; wheels widened interchange, and interchange 
has brought us the knowledge of the world in which 

o o 

we live. 

Cast iron was not in common use before the year 
1700, when Abraham Darby, of England, thought that 

7 t7 7 Cz 7 

iron might, in many cases, take the place of brass in 
founding. lie had in his service a Welsh shepherd 
boy, named John Thomas. Whilst looking on durum 
the experiments, the shepherd boy thought he saw 
where Darby missed his mark and begged to be allowed 
to try. The two remained alone in the work-shop all 
night, struggling with the stubborn metal and poor 
moulds, but, just at dawn they succeeded in casting 
an iron pot, and another of the great secrets of nature 
was solved. For more than a hundred years after the 
night when Darby and Thomas cast the first iron pot 
in a mould of sand contained in frames with air-holes, 
these two of our world’s benefactors and their descen- 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


81 


(hints, pursued the same process and kept the secret, 
with plugged keyholes and barred doors, at the since 
famous iron-works of Colebrooke Dale, England. 

Some of the greatest inventions of human genius 
and thought divide King Iron’s history into epochs. 

The first of these was the cupola or dome-shaped 
furnace, devised by Cort in 1784. The object he suc¬ 
ceeded in was to cause the flame, instead of acting 
directly upon the mass of metal, to curve round the 
roof, and play upon the surface of the charge. The 
puddler, who conducts the operation, constantly stirs 
the charge laid upon the floor of the furnace, so that 
every part, in turn, shall be presented to the oxygen of 
the blast, and the carbon of the iron shall be quite 
consumed. This puddling or stirring is, perhaps, the 
hardest manual labor known to industrv. It is done 
by men, working nearly naked, because of the glowing 
heat. They keep stirring the fluid metal, until it loses 
the liquid condition and assumes that of a pasty mass, 
which they work up into balls or blooms, and ladle 
out of the furnace. An engine, during the whole 
time, sends a blast of air forward, which cannot be 
arrested for a moment without injury to the metal. 
While the puddlers stir the sticky blooms about, so 
that each lump may come to the flame, they must 
change their rakes from time to time, so that they, too, 
may not melt. Such furious heat plays so upon the 


82 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



all the dreadful back-breaking, and the rotary furnace 
turns out four times as many blooms as by hand labor. 
Science has come forward at a time when the men, 
knowing how quickly puddling killed them, had begun 
to abandon their trade. AVe shall now be able to get bar 


puddlers that their eyes get bleared, and their faces 
blistered. 

Now puddling by machinery has, in a great measure, 
taken the place of manual labor. American inventors 
have contrived revolving furnaces. A " squeezer ” does 


BESSEMEli BBOOESSES. 





















STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


83 


iron without having to think of " the martyrs whom 
the tire slew." 

In 1829, Neilson introduced the hot blast in place 
of a cold blast, and brought air to the metal, 
at once ready for the work it had to do. As a 
result, the yield of metal increased at the rate of two 



to one, and a better quality of iron was gained, in less 
time, and with smaller consumption of coal. Until 
the invention of the hot blast, the moisture in the air 
that played on the metal had been an endless trouble 
and source of uncertainty in puddling 11,011 so in 
summer than in winter, from the larger amount of 
moisture absorbed by the warm and dry air. 




















































84 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


In 1855 a man named Bessemer invented a method of 
forcing currents of air or of steam among the particles 
of molten iron. This process made the metal malleable 
and gave it some of the qualities of cast steel. So 
simple is the process that we wonder why it had not 
been thought of before. 

L 0112 : ago, before railroads became universal it was 
thought that fine steel must be brought from England : 
but now our steel industries have improved so much 
that our own steel is as good if not better than that 
imported. 

Come into the steel-works of Pittsburg. What a 
whirr and clatter and roar ! 

Trip-hammers pound, engines puff and rattle. See 
how the furnaces glow with white heat, and how the 
heated iron or steel flashes as it is drawn out ! 

Immense shears are here, too, clipping great sheets 
of iron. 

Over there vast grindstones are smoothing and 
polishing plow colters. 

Not far off, men with wet cloths wrapped about 
them to keep bodies and clothing from burning, stand 
over the slits above the furnace. 

With long iron pincers they grasp the pots of 
melted metal, lift them out and pour the contents into 
the moulds. 

Before they can turn away from the furnace their 
wet clothes are smoking from the intense heat. 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


85 


Everything and everybody here move with so much 
vim and velocity, and make so much noise, that we 
think, for a moment, that all is confusion, endless and 
without meaning. But no one is confused but our¬ 
selves. 

Each department goes on with its share of the work, 
smoothly and steadily, without loss of time or waste 
of material, till the rude lumps of pig iron are changed 
to beautifully finished steel. Most of the steel bars 
from which the wires were drawn for the Brooklyn 
bridge were furnished by a Pittsburg firm. 


IRON. 

Iron vessels cross the ocean, 

Iron engines give them motion; 
Iron needles northward veering, 
Iron tillers vessels steering; 

Iron pipe our gas delivers, 

Iron bridges span our rivers; 

Iron pens are used for writing, 
Iron ink our thoughts inditing; 
Iron stoves for cooking victuals, 
Iron ovens, pots, and kettles; 

Iron horses draw our loads, 

Iron rails compose our roads; 

Iron anchors hold in sands, 

Iron bolts, and rods, and bands; 
Iron houses, iron walls, 

Iron cannon, iron balls; 

Iron axes, knives and chains, 

Iron augers, saws and planes; 

Iron globules in our blood, 

Iron particles in food; 

Iron lightning-rods on spires, 

Iron telegraphic wires; 

Iron hammers, nails and screws — 
Iron everything we use. 



86 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


LITTLE THINGS MADE FROM IRON. 



KNIVES. 

HAT pocket knife, Eddie, that treasure 
among your treasures, had quite a history 
before it came to you. Separate pieces of 
steel—which you remember is only iron 
hardened—were pounded and pounded until 
they were closely welded together in one piece in 
the shape of a long, narrow bar. The bar was perhaps 
half an inch in breadth, and about as thick as the back 
of your knife-blade. The forger took this bar, heated 
it, and began pounding again. How your eyes would 
have grown wide open and wondering, if you could 
have seen him fashion the form and rough edge of 
what looked like a long knife-blade out of it. 

The bar was next cut into short strips ; each of these 
strips — your blade among the rest — was then ground 


upon dry stone and thus made considerably lighter in 
weight. Then a piece of iron for the "tang” or 

shoulder — the iron middle of the handle — was 

\ 

welded on. Back to the forge went the shaped blade 
again where the maker’s name or mark was stamped 
upon it. To make it still harder, it was heated to a 
cherry red and suddenly plunged into cold water. 






STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


87 


Next came the grinding upon wet stones; with 
every turn ot the round stone the firm blade ° - rew 
thinner, till, at last, it was sharp enough and ready 
to be polished. I he polishing was done on wheels 



covered with leather and fine emery. The blade, 
bright and shining, was at last riveted into the ivory, 
bone or horn part of the handle, and lo ! there was 
your knife ready for the shop-keeper and for you. 






































88 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


NEEDLES. 

That needle which Jennie is using to piece together 
the bright bits of patch-work might tell, if it could 
speak, a very interesting story. A story of how steel 
wire was drawn out tine and in great lengths ; of the 
wire being wound in large coils until it was cut with 

CD Cj 



great, powerful shears into lengths each sufficient for 
two needles: Of these lengths, curved because of 
having been coiled, being straightened by being 
packed in bundles — a thousand or more in one bundle 
— within two strong, iron rings. 




































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


89 


Of how the bundles were heated red-hot, and then 
placed on an iron plate having two parallel grooves, 
and worked backward and forward by the pressure of 
an oblong iron tool — of how the lengths came out of 
this process perfectly straight and even and were sent 
to the pointer. How the pointer " sharpened ” both 
ends of the lengths of wire on a swiftly revolving 
grind-stone, while the poisonous dust Hew in every 
direction. Of how each wire was stamped in the cen¬ 
tre by means of dies, with the grooved and rounded 
impressions of two needle heads; how these were 
perforated by Hne steel punches. How these double 
needles, about one hundred at a time, were threaded 
together by Hne steel wires passing through the eyes, 
making them look like Hne-toothed combs : how the 
joinings of the pairs of heads were at last broken by 
bending. How each tiny head had to be smoothed 
and rounded with the Hie before the wire was removed, 
and the needles, perfect at last, are sent out to do 
their work in the world. 


Better than gold in a thinking mind 

That in realms of thought and books can find 

A treasure surpassing Peruvian ore, 

And live with the great and good of yore. 



90 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



PENS AND PENCILS. 

I hope you have wiped the steel pen lying there 
on your desk, Nellie, for it was a great deal of work 
to make it. First, steel had to he rolled into thin 
sheets, cut into broad strips, heated, scoured and 
rolled again. Then each strip had to he cut into 
blanks by a f ' cutting-out machine ; ” one or more holes 
were then stamped in each blank as well as the name 
of the maker. Next the blank was curved by stamp¬ 
ing. The nibs had to be made by grinding on an 
emery wheel; the slits made by peculiar shaped 
chisel-stampers. Then the pens, were heated and 
scoured, and placed in a revolving cylinder over a hot 
tire to give them that tine bronze color. 

The lead pencil :— do you take it up and wonder if 
that, too, has a history? It has. You would not 









































































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


91 


think that the part which is soft enough to " mark 
with” was a kind of iron ore , would you? It is, and 
is called graphite. This graphite—hlack lead we 
call it sometimes, but the name is incorrect—is cut 
into thin plates with a saw, and again into strips as 
wide as the plate is thick. These strips are laid in a 



groove in a piece of Florida cedar, and upon this is 
glued another piece of cedar. The whole is afterward 
made round by cutters which whirl around at a great 
speed. These cutters leave the wood perfectly smooth, 
and there is nothing left to do but to stamp the name 
of the maker, cut the wood into just the right length 
for pencils, and bind them in bundles. 










92 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



NAIL MAKING. 

The nail could tell a story that would please you, 
boys. A story of a great machine fed with hot strips 
of steel of the right breadth and thickness for 
nails. Of the way the machine "bites” the strips into 
the right lengths, clutches them by the neck as they 
fall, and holds them until it has "banged” the 
upper end into a head; a machine which turns out 
from 100 to 1000 nails in a minute. Whom do you 
suppose invented such a hurrying, banging instrument 
as this? American people, of course. 

But all nails are not made by machinery. Cast 
nails are made by running melted metal into sand 





















STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


93 


moulds; so are shoe-maker’s hob nails. Horse¬ 
shoe nails are made by hand, forged upon the anvil. 
When every nail had to be made by hand in England, 
not only the men, but their wives and children, worked 
all day in filthy sheds close by their homes. The nail 
master or overseer supplied them with nail rods and 
paid them for the work done ; sometimes m money, 
sometimes in "truck.” 



OLD NAIL FORGE. 


The nail factories of our land are chiefly in Massa¬ 
chusetts, New York, Connecticut, and the Schuylkill 
region of Pennsylvania. 

There are about three hundred sorts of nails alto¬ 
gether, each of ten different sizes ; from the smallest 
brads and tacks to the heavy rivets and bolts; in all, 
some three thousand varieties. Nails were made before 
iron was worked ; the first ones being made of bronze. 
Bronze nails were found in the ruins of Pompeii. 



























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. 

NDER a spreading chestnut-tree 
The village smithy stands; 

The smith, a mighty man is he, 

With large and sinewy hands; 

And the muscles of his brawny arms 
Are strong as iron bands. 

o 

* * * * * 

Week in, week out, from morn till night 
Y r ou can hear his bellows blow ; 

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge 
With measured beat and slow, 

Like a sCxton ringing the village bell 
When the evening sun is low. 

And children coming home from school 
Look in at the open door ; 

They love to see the flaming forge 
And hear the bellows roar, 

And catch the burning sparks that fly 

Like chaff from a threshing-floor. 

****** 

Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing, 

Onward through life he goes; 

Each morning sees some task begun, 

Each evening sees it close; 

Something attempted, something done, 

Has earned a night’s repose. 

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 
For the lesson thou hast taught! 

Thus at the flaming forge of life 
Our fortune must be wrought; 

Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
Each burning deed and thought. 


— Longfellow 



STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


95 




SEWING MACHINES. 

LD K ing Iron has so many children right 
here in our own country, all inheriting the 
strength and courage of their father and 
working away for us in the agricultural 
and commercial world, that the names and 
pictures of half of them would more than fill 
this book. There are hundreds upon hundreds of 
sewing-machine manufactories, but we will peep into 
one in New York. 

Here we are in one of the machine rooms ; here 
lathe-work, milling, grinding and drilling are being 

O 7 o «rj o o 

noisily carried on, until all parts of the machine are 
exactly fitted and properly finished. 

Every separate piece has to be inspected and gauged 
before it can be passed along as perfect. 





















1)6 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


Many of the working parts of the machine are of 
hardened steel, so that they shall not wear away easily. 

Before the machine can he put together the legs 
and iron parts are given that hard, polished, black 
surface by a process called japanning. 

This work is done in a room by itself. The japan 
mixture is put on with a brush in several coats. 



ASSEMBLY BOOM. 


Between each coat the irons are put into ovens and 
baked for ten or fifteen hours. 

After this process, the pieces to be ornamented go 
to another department, where decorations in painting, 
bronzing or gold-leaf are put on, or deca.lcoma.nie pic¬ 
tures transferred to them. 

In a room called the " assembly ” room, all the work 
























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


97 


done upon the machine, in the putting together of its 
parts, is looked over, except that of setting up the 
tables on their stands. 

Near by, is still another room, where " lacking ” is 
carried on. This is simply placing the machines, while 
being put together, upon jacks and setting them to 
"running” at a great speed to see if the parts will 
work. After this each machine is set to sewing a lit- 
tie to see if it is capable of doing the work for which 
it is intended when it shall go out into the world. 


Labor is glory ! the flying cloud lightens ; 

Idle hearts only the dark future frightens ; 

Play the sweet keys, wouldst thou keep them in tune. 

********* 

Labor is health ! Lo, the husbandman reaping, 

How through his veins goes the life current leaping! 
How his strong arm, in its stalwart pride sweeping, 
True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides. 

Labor is wealth ! In the sea the pearl groweth ; 

Rich the queen’s robe from the frail cocoon floweth ; 
From the fine acorn the strong forest bloweth ; 

Temple and statue the marble block hides. 



98 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



STOVES. 

OME into the kitchen and you will meet 
with one of the most useful of Iron’s chil¬ 
dren. fr O, yes, the stove!” you have 

7 %j 7 r 

cried out, lon<>' before I could write the 

7 O 

word. 

The pattern of the stove is first made in wood ; 
from this an iron casting is taken, which, after a great 
deal of filling and fitting up, is used as a working-pat¬ 
tern. These iron patterns are backed with wood in 
the same room where the " flasks ” or boxes contain¬ 
ing the sand for the moulds are made. 










STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


99 


The making of machines themselves bv machinery 
was an invention of our American people, and in many 
of our great cities are immense factories where wheels, 
boilers, bolts, all the parts of locomotives, Hour mills, 
mining machinery, shafting, hangers and pulleys, and 
hundreds of similar articles are made. 

There are several such manufacturing firms in Ohio, 
which sends its machines to every state in the Union 
and to many foreign parts. 

The greatest care must be taken to make every part 
of the pattern evenly balanced in weight, else the cast¬ 
ings made from it will be warped and cracked by the 
heat. Impressions of this pattern are made in the 
sand in the Masks or boxes. 

The melted iron is carried by hand from the furnace, 
poured into the moulds, or boxes of sand, and allowed 
to cool. 


All the work, except the rough heavy pieces for 
heaters and furnaces, aoes from the moulds to the 
cleanino* room. 

O 

In this room they are turned about in revolving 
drums about as large as hogsheads. This is to rub off 
all the sand left upon the iron. Some of this work is 
done by hand, the men using stiff steel wire brushes. 

The iron is next taken to the polishing room, where 
the pieces are made bright and beautiful by being 
ground upon emery wheels and polished upon leather- 
covered wooden ones. 


100 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


The nickel-plated parts were polished on these 
leather-covered wheels and taken to he plated in a 
room by themselves. A quantity of* nickel, a metal 
something like iron and cobalt, is melted in water, and 
acid is added. After some further preparation the 
pieces arc put in and the liquid is brought to boiling. 
In a few minutes the objects are completely coated and 
are taken out to be burnished on wheels covered with 
felt and muslin. 

In the ''mounting” room tlie stoves are all put 
together; the parts being made to tit evenly and work 
nicely. 


“ So artists melt the sullen ore of lead, 

By heaping coals of fire upon its head ; 

From the kind warmth the metal learns to flow, 
And pure from dross the silver runs below. ” 





STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


101 



MATCH MAKING. 


WATCHES AND CLOCKS. 



HETHER you are so fortunate as to own a 

watch,or whether you only hope to own 

one some day, I think you will like to 

learn something of its manufacture. Few 

you young folks, we are sure, are so thought- 

% 

less as never to have wondered at t he mechanism 
of the patient house clock. Clocks are believed to 
have been in use as early as the twelfth century. 

Lonff years ago,— in the sixteenth century — before 
watches had been thought of, and when clocks were 
very imperfect affairs and very scarce, that great 
thinker, Galileo, was sitting in a cathedral. As he sat 

























102 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


there he noticed that a lamp, hanging by a slender 
chain from the top of the building was swinging 
steadily to and fro. 

This set him thinking. He went home, made a 
pendulum and set it swinging in the same manner. 
He found its motions so exact and steady that by count- 
ing the number of times it moved backward and for- 
ward it might be used as an instrument for dividing 
periods of time. He found, too, that two pendulums 
of the same length would beat time exactly together; 

O i P 

and that a short pendulum moved to and fro more 
times in a given period than did a long pendulum. 

Of course these pendulums could not be used for 
clocks;—no such idea entered his head, so far as we 
can find out — because there was no way to keep 
them going except by "'jogging” them, now and then, 
with the finger; and there was no wav to mark the 
time except by counting; but they did very well for 
marking the time when making calculations in astron- 
omy, and for that they were used for many years. 

But the pendulum once invented, some clever men 
long afterward thought out a way to keep it going 
and to mark the time upon a dial. 

If we look at the inside of one of our clocks, we shall 
find it has all these parts :— frame, wheels, pinions, 
pendulum and weight. The frame has two brass 
plates, kept at a proper distance from each other by 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


103 


four turned pillars ; and there are little holes made in 
these two plates in which the pivots of the pinions turn. 

The wheels are made of brass and generally have a 
number of teeth or cogs around their edges. There 
are usually four of these wheels — the "great wheel,” 
"centre wheel,” "third wheel” and "escape wheel.” 

The pinions arc the small steel wheels which the 
brass wheels work into and drive around. 

The pendulum is hung at the back of the works by 
a steel spring. 

The weight is suspended by a line. 

This line is wound upon what is called a "barrel,” 
which is attached to the great wheel. 

"Wind up ” the clock carefully and you will see 
that the string of the weight winds itself around the 
"barrel ” until the weight is high up in the clock. 

Set the clock going. See, the weight descends a 
little ; its motion makes the " great wheel ” turn a 
little ; this moves the centre wheel pinion, and so on 
from one wheel to another, until the escape wheel 
moves. 

The escape wheel gives the pendulum a slight 
"push” and makes the "tick-tick,” which makes the 
clock such pleasant company. 

The wheels are so arranged that, whatever the 
length of the pendulum may be, the centre wheel 
must turn round once in an hour. 


104 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


The centre wheel and its pinion have their axes 
long enough to reach through to the " face or dial 
of the clock and carry the ” hands.” But a clock 
with weights will not ” go unless it is kept in an 
upright position ; so thinking, ingenious men set to 
work to invent a pocket time-piece that would keep 
time in any position. At last they produced the 
watch which as you well know, regulates the motion 

«/ o 



of its wheels, not by a pendulum, but by the heavy 
metal wheel called the balance. 

The process which brings these wonderful little 
machines out of simple wires of steel, plates of 
brass, and ingots of gold and silver is very curious. 

All the minute parts of a watch are made by 
machinery in this country. Equally curious with the 
making of the minute screws is the fashioning of 
the other tiny parts. One machine punches a plain 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


105 


round piece of brass ; another makes it a skeleton 
wheel ; a third cuts the teeth on a score of wheels ; 
yet another polishes it ; then it goes into a room 
where it is immersed in a solution of gold, thus 
gilding it ; and it comes out one of those beautiful 
little wheels which you see moving so exactly on its 
pivot in the completed watch. 

Another apparatus is used to fashion the escape¬ 
ment wheels, with their oddly-turned teeth, and the 
compensation balance, the most conspicuous of all 
the wheels of a watch, with its two sections, held 
together by a thin, diametrical bar of steel, and its 
outer and inner rims of brass and steel. This com¬ 
pensation balance is one of the most important inven¬ 
tions in the modern watch, as the different degrees of 
the contraction, or expansion, by cold or heat, of the 
copper and steel rims, keep the balance constant in 
all temperatures. No piece, however small, is put 
into a watch until it has been measured and weighed. 
There is also a gauging machine for measuring thick- 
ness, and still another machine measures the hair 
springs. 

One of the most interesting rooms is that in which 
the dials, or white faces of the watches, are made. 
These are at first plain, round copper pieces, cut out 
of the sheets by machinery. A preparation of white 
enamel is spread over this copper piece ; and when it 


106 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


is dry it is inserted into a red-hot hole, where the 
enamel is fused hard on the copper. It is then 
ground with tine sand and again subjected to tire to 
give it the glossy appearance which we see on the 
watch’s face. 



ENAMELING WATCH FACES. 


Another curious room is that where the different 
brass pieces are gilded by means of batteries and gold 
solutions. The watches are tested, as to bearing dif- 
ferent temperatures, by first being placed in little 
drawers where the air is made very warm, and then 
in similar little drawers where it is more than 
freezing cold. 











































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


107 



NASMYTH HAMMER—SLEDGES. 


MORE ABOUT IRON. 

OW if you are rested by reading about the 
little things, we will look at some ot the 
larger of King Iron’s children. I he 

e> o 

armor-plates which clothe our war ships ; 
the eighty or one hundred-ton steel guns 
with which the vessels are armed; the huge 
iron beams and girders which span the railway 
terminus; the iron bridges which cross broad 
rivers and arms ot the sea ^ the monstious shafts and 
















108 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


giant fly-wheels which regulate whole systems of mill 
work, the slabs and masses, rolled, wrought, or 
twisted — all these are the products of the steam ham¬ 
mer. This monster can strike his blows with a force 
to which no limit can be found, yet he can be so per¬ 
fectly controlled as to crack a nut without injuring the 
meat. As the great masses, many tons in weight, move 
up and down, they look like anvils more than hammers, 
or rather a dozen anvils welded into one. Down they 
come with a thud that shakes the around and scatters 
thousands of bright sparks. But all steam-hammers 
are not large ; the principle works just as well in a 
small compass. 

Tremendous double iron rollers, some twelve feet 
long, and a yard in girth, relieve the steam-hammer 
of plate work. Without teeth, they bite the sheet of 
glowing iron with their gums, and the force of their 
grip is proved by the effect upon the metal, which 
goes in thick, and comes out thin, as though it was 
clay. Backward and forward a number of times, and 
the end is an armor plate, twelve to fifteen inches 
thick ; or a thin sheet, for the tin-plate worker, for the 
making of pots and pans. 

So much do the beauty, strength, and perfect work¬ 
ing of a machine depend upon its being exactly right, 
that the fitting-shop of a machinist, where the bright 
parts of an engine are burnished and every part is 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


109 


examined and tried, is a picture to dazzle the eye and 
amaze the senses. One can scarcely believe that the 
movements of wheels and pulleys, repeated by thous¬ 
ands; with their leather bands depending or stretching 
from them, over and under, around and about, in and 



MACHINE SHOP. 


out and everywhere, and making no trifling clash, are 
merely the tools at work for making engines and 
frames, and not the finished machinery of a mill. 
Lathes, planes, and other tools, themselves the pro¬ 
duct of similar tools, work as if they thought and 
planned. A ceiling to the room exists only in fancy, 


















110 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


for the root is but a niiiss of pulleys ; tackle aftei 
tackle, the counterparts of each other, and to each 
tackle a whirring lathe beneath. Each tool has its 
own duty and o-oes about it in the din without inter- 
fering with its neighbor. 



In one place, an immense tube, big enough for a 
water-main, is peeling itselt as it revolves against a 
sharp tool, and leaves a fanciful heap ot iron ribands 
or ringlets. Over yonder the tire of a locomotive 
driving-wheel revolves. Can it be real iron? With 
each turn, the circumference gets nearer to the centre 























































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


Ill 


by a quarter of an inch. Stop and think what that 
means. It means that a strip of iron is simply scraped 
off all around as the wheel turns. Get an iron wheel 


and a sharp chisel and take off a like circlet a quarter 
of an inch thick. That will tell you what this lathe 

%j 

does. 

Such work as engine and machine-making, where 
all depends upon the quality of material, must he of 
forged iron. Even many of the iron wheels of a rail- 
way carriage are wrought under the hammer. The 
spokes are made with club ends, and these when at a 
white heat are welded to form the box of the wheel. 
Then again, it is a tiery sight to lit the tires. The red 
hot hoop, slung from the forge, hangs evenly over the 
radiating spokes and drops gently down into its place. 
Being then deluged with water, it contracts and binds 
so fast that there is very small chance of its ever after 
slipping. 


SONG OF THE FORGE. 

C LANG, clang! the massive anvils ring; 

Clang, clang a hundred hammers swing; 
Like the thunder-rattle of a tropic sky, 
The blows still multiply, — 

Clang, clang ! 

Say, brothers of the dusky brow, 

What are your strong arms forging now? 



112 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


Clang, clang! — we forge the colter now, — 
The colter of the kindly plough. 

***** 

Clang, clang ! — again, my mates, what glows 
Beneath the hammers’ potent blows? 

Clank, clank ! — we forge the giant chain 
Which bears the gallant vessel’s strain 
Mid stormy winds and adverse tides, 

Secured by this, the good ship braves 
The rocky roadstead and the waves 
Which thunder on her sides. 

^ 41 *i/ 

VJv yj\ s\\ /T* 

Clang, clang ! a burning torrent, clear 
And brilliant, of bright sparks is poured 
Around and up in the dusky air 
As our hammers forge the sword. 

The Sword ! a name of dread ; yet when 
Upon the freeman’s thigh ’tis bound, 

While for his altar and his hearth, 

While for the land that gave him birth, 

The war-drums roll, the trumpets sound,— 
How sacred is it then ! 


Labor is life ! ’Tis the still water faileth ; 
Idleness ever despaireth, bewaileth ; 

Keep the watch wound, for the dark rust assaileth ; 
Flowers droop and die in the stillness of noon. 



STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


113 



ANCIENT LATHE. 


THE LATHE. 

UT what is the lathe , do you ask, which 
seems to play so important a part in so 
many manufactures? 

We do not know when or by whom the 
lathe was first used, but we do know that an 
ancient Asiatic nation, living among the Car- 

o o 

pathians, used to produce vases with the use of such a 
lathe as you see in this picture. 

The piece of wood to be shaped was held by the 
pointed plugs of wood (h. b.) A cord was tied to a 

























114 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


slender tree, passed around one end of the work, (<x,) 
and tied to the treadle (c). 

Moving the treadle up and down made the piece of 
wood turn round and round while the workman held a 



sharp, cutting-tool against it, soon forming it into an 
even, graceful shape. 

v *■ 

Think of a small decimal fraction multiplied and 
multiplied by itself till it has grown away up among 
the whole numbers. This ancient, rude affair is the 
















































































































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


115 


decimal which ingenuity has multiplied into the powei- 
ful machines of to-day. 

The simplest lathe used in civilized countries is the 
foot-lathe. 

The treadle, moved by the foot, pulls the diiving 
pulley around. The driving pulley moves the belt,; the 
belt moves the top pulley, which whirls the " live spin- 



engine lathe. 


die’’around with it. The spindle, revolving, turns 
the work around. 

To hold the work in place a sort ot screw is made, 
called a " lathe-dog,” because it grasps the piece ot 
wood with such a bite. 

The lathe family is very large. Some move *>>’ 
hand; some by steam power, and are capable ot cut¬ 
ting metal as well as wood. This large one is an 
"engine lathe” in which the tool moves either along 

























116 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


or across the work by means of self-acting machinery 
which is all inside and out of sight. 

It seems like " witch-work ” to watch it moving, 



CUTTING WROUGHT-IKUN. 

cutting: off the curled ribbons of iron without seeming: 

O O 

to make any effort. 

Foremost among lathes is the famous "screw-cutter” 

o 

which traces a regular spiral upon the work by self- 



CUTTING STEEL. 


acting means. There is one wood-worker’s lathe 
which we must not forget, because he is such a lively 
little fellow and makes so many things that we all use : 
wooden boxes, toy carriages, wheels, wooden balls, 
etc. 
































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


117 


The workman puts a square stick of wood in the 
lathe and simply pulls the long handle, first in one 
way, then in another, and so brings four different sets 
of tools to work one after another. Finally by press¬ 
ing his knee against a pad which hangs down at the 
bottom, the finished work is cut off. 

You would laugh to see the workman, for he has to 
use both arms and legs, as well as his knee, at once, 
and all so rapidly that he looks like a long-legged 
spider. 


Let us be content to work, 

To do the thing we can, and not presume 
To fret because ’tis little. ’Twill employ 
Seven men, they say, to make a perfect pin. 

Who makes the head consents to miss the point; 
Who makes the point agrees to leave the head ; 

And if a man should cry, 44 I want a pin, 

And I must make it straightway, head and point, ” 
His wisdom is not worth the pin he wants. 

— Mrs. E. B. Browning. 







118 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY 




ANCIENT DWELLINGS. 


THE STORY OF YOUR HOUSE. 



HE Indians of the forest sleep in wigwams ; 
the Arabs of the deserts wander about 
with their tents ; and the tribes round the 
North Pole build homes of snow. In the 
rys before man had any written history, whole 
races burrowed under ground, or scooped caves for 
dwellings in the rocks. In our own country, changes 
are so frequent, that we cannot be sure of the weather 
from day to day, and, in certain seasons, hardly from 





















STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


119 


hour to hour. The means of shelter, therefore, has a 
Ions: history of its own. 

The Britons lived in huts, with walls wattled or 
woven with wicker-work and plastered with mud, till 
the Romans taught them to make bricks and tiles and 



to build strong houses. Roman work was very good 
and lasting. Though the villas and palaces built by 
the Romans, have long decayed and disappeared, 
walls still remain as sound as ever, round the cities 
and towns which used to he Roman camps, and still 
keep their Roman names. 





















120 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


The Normans built great feudal castles, the ruins of 

O 7 

which still adorn English landscapes, while their serfs 
dwelt in mean hovels, with the bare ground for the 
door, or, at best, strewn with rushes which were 
seldom changed. Our own houses are built for health, 
comfort, and beauty, far beyond the ideas of our fore- 


TENT-LIKK. 

fathers. Think of the many beautiful public build¬ 
ings and handsome houses of our own day, and con- 
trast them with what we read of ancient dwellings, 
and even with what is still the custom in the cold 
country where the Esquimaux live ; where they build 
houses of snow, and creep into them through small, 
low openings near the ground. 


















STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


121 



LUMBERERS AT WORK. 


LUMBER. 

IRST of all, we will inquire about the tim¬ 
ber and boards which form the frame-work 
of our houses. To have this inquiry an- 
1 swered, you must come, in imagination, 
ith me to some of the lumber regions of our 
land. Let us go to the lumber regions among the 












122 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


rivers of Northern America. The ” master looker” 

CC 

does not lead his sturdy band any further into the 
forest than is necessary to find good timber, for he is 

t J CD 7 

anxious to keep in the neighborhood of some stream. 
A place selected, the men build rude huts for them¬ 
selves, during the " logging ” season, of mossy logs 
and stout fragrant branches laid one upon another, 
much as you build " cob-houses." When these walls 

4 J 

are high enough to allow the owner to stand upright, 

every crevice is stopped with moss. A rude roof of 

roughly hewn pine boards is put on and a hole is made 

which serves as a chimney. The cabins are built in 

•/ 

so short a time that they look as though they had 
popped up out of the ground in the night. The 
beds are armfuls of small fragrant twigs of spruce, 
fur, or pine. 

The whole party is up in the early morning: the 
cooks fall to work baking bread and slicing salted 
beef and pork. Breakfast over, the leaders mark the 
best trees and ' f logging” begins in earnest. Chopping 
and sawing go on from morning till night. As the 
trees fall, one after another, and their branches are cut 
off, they are hauled together in great brown heaps 
until sufficient snow has fallen to make the road to 
the stream hard and even. 

^ 1 1 ^ ^ ^ ^ s < t e ma i lv e d, laid on sleds and take their 
first land journey. The load, arrived at the stream, 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


123 


now frozen, is toppled over from the sled to the ice. 
More loads are emptied, and the ice cracks and breaks 
letting the logs into the water. At last the harvest 
of timber is piled up for miles along the river not far 
from the banks. 



Here it must rest until the warm spring wind shall 
come and unfasten its icy chains and set it free. 
Spring comes at last. The great army of logs has 
been gathered together and started down stream. It 
is a long, slow journey. The workers, keeping their 
slippery positions on the rolling logs, are ready with 













124 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


sharp-pointed poles in hand to correct any rebellious 
log that may threaten to block the way. 

In the lumber regions of Canada, it is an interesting 
sight to view the transportation of the timber in the 
early spring — to hold one’s breath as the great mass 
of logs goes slipping and whirling down the running 
torrent—down, down, to be caught in the whirling 
rapids, and tossed and whirled in every direction, 
until a bend in the river brings them into smooth 
water again. 

Think what a slow, monotonous journey it must 
be to those men who guide the wide rafts of logs, 
lashed together, after the rapids and other dangerous 
waters have been passed, to move slowly along for 
days and days, within sight and sound of the busy 
life along the shores. To have steamers, yacht*, and 
even small fishing boats go living by and leave them 
far behind. 

At last comes one bright day in May when the long 
journey is ended. The logs are dragged upon the 
river-bank and taken to the great steam saw mills. 
Into one side they go and come out at the other cut 
into boards or timbers of any required size or thick¬ 
ness. 

Frameworks of saws, set close for veneers or wide 
apart for planks, and moved by steam, cut complete 
logs of timber at one operation : band-saws, or flexible 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


125 


saws, are made to follow the most delicate tracings of 
fretwork; and circular saws, from an inch to nine 



FELLING AND SAWING. 


feet across, revolving at the rate of a thousand turns 
a minute, cut the largest "baulks” of timber, as it 
they were but giant bars of soap. 


One age moves onward, and the next builds up 

Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood 

The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild, 

Rearing from out the forests they had felled 

The goodly frame-work of a fairer state ; 

The builder’s trowel and the settler’s ax 

Are seldom wielded by the self same hand ; 

Ours is the harder task, yet not the less 

Shall we receive the blessing for our toil 

From the choice spirits of the after-time. 

—Russell Lowell. 

















120 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY 



SHIP-BUILDING. 

he largest and finest timbers do not go into 
house-building, as that ship just coming 
into the harbor can testify. 

How strange the contrast between the civil- 
d man and the savage ! By joining together 
some rough boards, the savage makes a raft, floating 
at the will of the tide without control. He hews down 
a tree, scoops out the trunk, and forms a rude 
canoe. The coracle of the ancient Britons which we 

















































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


127 


see in the picture, was made by covering a wicker 
frame with leather or oil-cloth, and it is still used by 
some of the ' f fisher-folk ” of Wales. 

Then there was the ancient galley, or trireme of the 
Romans, so called because it had three tiers or rows 



ANCIENT SHIPS. 


of oars ; the ship of ancient Egypt and the gaily dec¬ 
orated argosies of the Greeks. The ships used in the 
fleet of the Spanish Armada were in some respects a 
good deal like some of our vessels, except that they 
were fitted with oars as well as sails. 














































128 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


The war galley of the Greeks originally had a single 

mast and later two masts, hut depended chiefly upon 

its oars, which were ranged in a single line on each 

side, and each handled by one rower. 

«/ 


Galleys continued in use in the Mediterranean 
€/ 

until late in the seventeenth century, and were often 

«/ ' 

from one hundred to two hundred feet long, with 
twenty oars to each side, and capable of carrying one 
thousand to twelve hundred men. 

Two of the ships in which the discoverers of tin' New 
World started on their voyage were of the kind called 
caravels. They were not decked over, but were built 
high at either end, with cabins that looked like houses 
or castles. The bows were broad and they carried four 


masts and lateen sails. 


Thus we see the gradual transition from the rude 

cajjoe of the savage to the iron clads of war, and the 

steam vessels of splendid size and comfort which now 

plough the waves between Europe and America, in as 

few days as it used to take months. 

«/ 

Ships of to-day are built in different forms accord¬ 
ing to the burdens they have to carry. 

The place in which the ship is built is called a slip. 
In the middle and leading down to the water’s edge is 
a row of piles of stout pieces of wood called /flocks. 

It is a strange sight to see the skeleton of one of 
these huge ships growing into size and shape; every 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


129 


piece must be strong and secure. Generally each 
part must be fashioned from rough logs, but in some 
"yards" there are machines so contrived as to saw the 
timbers at once into shapes having the right curves 
and twist to tit together. 



Perhaps you have seen the keel prepared and laid 
upon the blocks and have noticed how the frame tim¬ 
bers were lifted and fastened to the places they were 
to occupy. 

The shape and means of making vessels may vary a 
little, but the end and aim of every ship-builder is to 








130 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


make the whole thing firm, yet light. When the 
skeleton is at last mounted up in its place it must be 
clothed or "planked” in as strong and neat a fashion 
as possible. 

This planking is no easy task, for the planks must 



SHIP-BUILDING. 


be first carefully cut and trimmed, next they have to 
be steamed to make them manageable, then taken at 
once to the staging, which has been built round about 
the great carcass. One end ol the hot, sodden plank 
is fastened and the other coaxed into place. It is held 























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


131 


in^ its place by various contrivances, till the shipwright 
has time to fix it securely by bolts of various sorts. 

Next follows the ceiling or inside planking of the 
vessel and the placing of the deck beams, which have 
to be cut and fixed, so as to bear the sweat amount of 
strain put upon them in various ways. 

They must fit fast and close to the inside of the 
timbers, so that they may do their share, aided by 
pillars, in supporting the heavy loads which the decks 
have to sustain. 

At the end farthest from the water is raised the 
stem ,which really is the keel carried upward. 

On each side of the upper part of the stem is fixed 
an upright timber; these are called the knight heads 
and the bowsprit, lies between them. The pillars and 
beams are sometimes made of iron and the decks often 
plated. 

The making of port holes, magazines, bunkers, 
cabins, berths, etc., goes on by degrees during the 
building of the ship. 

The masts are made by a distinct set of men. There 
are three masts for a large ship, two for a schooner, 
or brig, and one for a sloop or cutter. To help make 
the masts staple, and to fasten the rigging and 
sails to them there are yards, booms, tops, cross- 
trees, trestle-trees and timbers, and spars of various 
kinds. 


132 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


A very large mast is built up of pieces called spin¬ 
dles, side trees and other odd names, bound together 
by iron wedges, driven in hot. 

To prevent sea-weed and shell-fish from collecting 
on the bottom, ships are often sheathed with thin 
sheets of copper, which sheds them oft’. 


THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 

Build me straight, O worthy master, 

Stanch and strong a goodly vessel. 

That shall laugh at all disaster, 

And with wave and whirlwind wrestle. 
******** 
There’s not a ship that sails the ocean, 

But every climate, every soil, 

Must bring its tribute great or small 
And help to build the wooden wall. 
******** 
And soon throughout the ship yard’s bounds 
Were heard the intermingled sounds 
Of axes and of mallets plied 
With vigorous arms on every side ; 

Plied so deftly and so well 

That ere the shadows of evening fell 

The keel of oak for a noble ship, 

Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong 



STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


133 


Was lying ready and stretched along 
The blocks well placed upon the slip. 

******** 
To-day the vessel shall be launched! 

With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, 

And o’er the bay, 

Slowly in all his splendors light, 

The great sun rises to behold the sight. 

******** 

Loud and sudden there was heard, 

All around them and below, 

The sound of hammers, blow on blow, 

Knocking away the shores and spurs. 

And see ! she stirs ! 

She starts,— she moves—she seems to feel 
A thrill of life along her keel, 

And spurning with her foot the ground, 

With one exultant, joyous bound 
She leaps into the ocean’s arms ! 

— Longfellow. 

















134 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY, 



QUARRY. 


MARBLE AND GRANITE- 

OW, having seen to what uses the boards 
and timber are put, let us find out about 
the stone of which our houses and public 
buildings are made. Marble and granite 
e the most beautiful and enduring of all 
tie, and are the most in demand for promi¬ 
nent buildings and statuary. 

Sixty years ago, the land where the West Rutland, 
(Vt.) marble quarries now are, was a barren looking 
pasture, overgrown with cedars. Here and there 















STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


135 


among the dark evergreens, gleaming white stones 
showed themselves above the surface of the around. 

Flocks of sheep gamboled, fed upon the scanty 
grass, or rested in the shadows there, and nobody 
knew or even dreamed of the immense wealth which 
Old Father Time with rain, and sun, and frost for 
his tools, had hidden away in the rugged hills. 

But a Mr. Barnes who had noticed the marble 
rocks and burned some of them to make lime, believed 
thev were good enough to make tomb-stones. 

Everybody laughed at the idea, and so cheaply 
was the land valued that he bought the whole west- 
ward slope of the pasture, giving for pay a poor old 
horse worth about seventy-five dollars. 

From this small beginning grew the great marble 
works of West Rutland. In ten years after the pur¬ 
chase of this land, three quarries were being worked in 
it. 


But all difficulties were not yet overcome. People 
said that American marble would not keep its purity 
of color like the imported marbles, so they would not 
buy them. 

But time has proved that the Rutland marble is even 
better than that of foreign quarries. 

Now a line of railroads runs near the quarries, and 
in the great mills forty-eight gangs of saws, with from 
eight to forty-eight saws in each gang, run night and 


136 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


day the year round. Beside this there are ten thou- 
sand tons or so of marble shipped every year from this 
to other mills. 

In the hillsides are great pits being dug deeper and 
wider every year, where men and engines work away 
in all weathers and seasons. 

So deep are the pits that the men at the bottom 
look like so many toiling ants, and up from the depths, 
made smoky by the breaths of numerous engines, 
comes the confused sounds of puffing machinery, 
clinking drills and murmuring voices. All along the 

O O O 


edge of the pits are rows of derricks, stretching giant 
arms and webs of iron guys against the sky. 

The blocks of marble have holes drilled in them 
about six inches apart; into these holes iron wedges 
are driven, which split off the rock and lift it a little, 
ready to be seized and hoisted by the derrick. 

The old method of blasting had to be given up 
because it spoiled many and many a ton of beautiful 
marble. 

In all large quarries the drilling is done by machines 

cj a O i/ 

which are moved by steam, and which bite at the rock 
savagely. 

About the mills and quarries are old-fashioned ox- 
teams hauling away cart-loads of waste and rubbish, 
or dragging great blocks of rough marble to the mills. 

Passing near the shouting ox-driver, an engine 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


137 



draws its cars up among the great piles of unhewn 
marble. 

I have told you of the busy saws in the mill.— 
' Saws ! ” do you ask? "Can they saw marble?" 


A MARBLE QUARRY. 

Yes, not with jaiKjed, slender saws, but with great 
smooth-edged strips of soft iron, worked up and down 
by a mighty steam engine of three hundred horse 
power. 

On the top of the block to be sawed is piled a heap of 
sand which is washed into the cuts made by the saw 














138 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


by the drip of water from overhead, and answers for 
teeth to the saws. 

The sawing-mill is not a bit cheerful, for it is Ions:, 
low, dark and damp. The machinery growls and 
hisses as it gnaws away upon the stone, as if it were 
some terrible beast dining in his den. 

Here in Rutland, marble is as common as bricks 
elsewhere. All around the mills are rubbish heaps of 
it: side-walks and floors are flagged and tiled with it. 

American quarries furnish as much thin marble for 



GRAPHIC GRANITE. 


furniture and mantels as do any foreign quarries ; for 
cemetery work and for building we supply an immense 
amount. 

Granite is obtained in much the same way as marble, 
by drilling and then sawing the blocks; if required 
smooth, they are ground down with wet sand and 
emery, and finally polished. 

Granite is found in many of the States of the Union. 
All the New England States produce it and one of 
them has long been known as the “ Granite State.” 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


139 


Can you tell me which one? The famous Quincy 
granite possesses some of the qualities of the red 
“ Scotch granite.” 

Granite is used for steps and sills of houses, and 
frequently for the entire outside of buildings— custom 
houses and post-offices of Boston and New York, 
Treasury Building at \\ ashington, which has columns 
each of a single stone thirty-one feet high ; supports 
of bridges and monuments—Brooklyn Bridge, Bun¬ 
ker Hill Monument, Egyptian Obelisk in Central Park, 
N. Y. ; occasionally for statuary (statue of Alexander 
Hamilton on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, the 
statue of Colonel Cass, and the group on the Ether 
Monument in the Public Garden of the same city,) 
though where elaborate carving is required it is* not 
much employed. The statue of Hamilton mentioned 
is said to be the first ever made of granite in this 

ij 

country, and no other American city has three public 
statues of this material. 

Blocks of granite are used in paving the roadway 
of the principal streets in our large cities and for 
sidewalk curbings. 


















140 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY 



SL ATE QUARK V. 


SLATE AND BRICK. 

ERE is another useful article which is needed 
in our house building. 

O 

Slate is a rock composed of certain 
parts of clay, which makes it easy to be 
plit into thin plates, and is used for roofing 
houses; also, tables are made from it, and 
chimney-pieces, and you are all familiar with the 
form in which it comes to you for writing upon. 























STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


141 


The color of the stone is mostly bluish or blackish- 
o'ray. North Wales is the most important slate-pro¬ 
ducing country in the world. From Pennsylvania, 
and Vermont comes most of our supply for this country. 

We must not forget to find out about the brick of 



BRICK-MAKING. 


which we see so much in building houses. It is made 
from brick-clay, a peculiar kind of earth containing 
iron peroxid, which gives it a reddish color. The 
blocks, or bricks, are formed by moistening and knead¬ 
ing the clay, and then moulding into shape. They are 

















142 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


then hardened by being burned in a kiln or furnace, 
or, in some very warm countries, by being dried in the 
sun. 

Bricks in the United States and Europe are gener¬ 
ally red, but some clays produce yellow bricks, as, 
for example, the Milwaukee brick , which is so much 
used as an ornamental building material. Bricks in 
China and Japan are of a slaty-blue color. 



BRICKLAYERS AT WORK. 











































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


143 



A VISIT TO THE GLASS WORKS. 



E all want to know how the glass which 

forms such a useful and necessary article 

*/ 

in our houses, is manufactured, and in¬ 
deed the process is well worth our at¬ 
tention. 

It is very interesting and instructive to watch the 
making of different articles with which we are familiar, 
so let us pay a visit to a glass works and spend an 
hour in seeing them manufacture some of those pretty 




































































144 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


objects we admire so much, as well as the panes of 
glass which are put into windows. 

We had better begin at Ihe beginning, so let us go 
into this out-of-door shed, where are such a number of 
large barrels. 

What is this man doing? Mixing what seems like 

C O 

a big pudding in a trough. The principal ingredients 
of glass are this fine white sand, potash, saltpetre and 
red lead. They are put together in a crucible — which 
is a sort of a great jar, with the mouth at the side in¬ 



stead of the top — and placed in a furnace. What a 
rush of hot air meets us as the man opens a door which 



cone-shaped erection, with openings all round, through 
which can be seen the intense glow of the molten 
glass within. Opposite each of these openings is a 
crucible, and the spaces between are tilled up with 
fuel. All around are men wielding long rods, with 
what look like globes of tire on the ends. 

See the pretty glass jug ! So gracefully shaped, 







STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


145 


and, as the children say, ”such cunning little curly 
feet." Would you not like to find out how it was made ? 

There is one just being begun ; we will stand here, 
and see it through. The man we arc watchiim first 
thrusts his rod, which, by the way, is hollow, into 
the mouth of a crucible, turns it about lbr a moment 
or two, and then withdraws it, loaded at the end 
with a ball of metal, as the liquid glass is called. 



Every trace of sand, lead, and all other ingredients 
has disappeared, being completely dissolved by the 
great heat, and pure, clear glass has taken their place. 
This ball, red-hot, and about as thick as treacle, is 
rolled for a short time upon a steel plate ; then the 
man blows into it, down the long tube, and we see it 
swell. He rolls again, and blows again, the globe ex¬ 
panding still more, and now the shaping begins. 

This is done with a wooden instrument — from 


















146 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


which the hot glass often causes sparks to fly — the 

O 1 1 

glowing hull) being all the time twirled on the rod to 
keep it round, else, being soft, it would lose its form. 
At intervals it is again put into the mouth of the fur¬ 
nace to heat it np, for if it cools too fast, it becomes too 
hard to manipulate. 



Presently he takes up a tool which looks like a 
large pair of pincers or tongs. With these he makes 
a hole in the end of the still revolving globe, and, by 
stretching them open, expands it into a hollow, cup¬ 
like form. Then we see the jug is coming. 

The next step is to mould the neck into shape, for 

























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


147 


at first it was upright, rather like a bottle. Then, 
heating it once more, the man proceeds to trim it 
around the top with a pair of scissors. Yet so quickly 
does the " metal ” cool, that the pieces, so soft when 
cut off, fall on the ground with the "clink” of hard¬ 
ened glass, and the jug has to be warmed again before 
the trimming can be completed and the lip formed. 



A FURNACE. 


Once more is the now really shapable article held 
in the fervent glow of the furnace. At this stage of 
the proceedings a lad comes forward with a rod which 
is not hollow, and pushing it into another opening of 
the crucible, brings it out with a small lump of glass 
on the end. With this he hurries to the first work¬ 
man, and lets it drop itself upon a certain spot near 
the bottom of the hot jug, which is held in position tor 













148 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


the purpose. These are "the little curly feet. ” Now 
the man with the pincers takes hold of the pliable foot, 
which he has cut oft* to the length required, and curls 
it neatly under, exactly like the feet of the jug we ad¬ 
mired so much. Then another bit of metal is dropped 
on just above the first. What is this for? Don’t you 
remember there is a little lion’s head at the top of 
each foot? This is what this last lump of metal is 
for. The workman stamps the finishing ornament 
with a stamp or die, just as if it were sealing-wax, and 



repeats the process with each of the four feet. Then 
comes the handle, which is drawn out, of course, 
while in an almost liquid state, and attached in a simi¬ 
lar manner. Now we wonder how he will ever <ret it 
off the end of the rod without breaking:. The lad 
comes forward, gives the jug a slight tap, and it is 
instantly and safely detached. A rough spot, how¬ 
ever, remains at the bottom, which will, by-and-by, be 
ground down on a sanded wheel. 

It would be nice to have one of those jugs to carry 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


149 


away with us, but we should probably break it on the 
way home, for they are not yet annealed , and are ex¬ 
tremely brittle. They will have to go into a great 
oven, which is intensely hot at first, and is allowed to 
gradually grow cooler. The jugs will not be taken 



ANNEALING OVEN. 


out till it is quite cold. This process, which toughens 
the glass and makes it durable, occupies from twenty- 
four hours to a week, and even longer, according to 
the size and weight of the articles. Last of all, those 
pretty little stars will be engraved upon it with a small 
steel wheel. Then, and not till then, is the glass jug 
complete. 


























































150 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


WINDOW-GLASS. 

Now lot us watch them making the glass which goes 
into windows. The melted glass having been brought, 
as we have seen, from a liquid state to the condition 
in which it may be worked, the gatherer dips the 
end of his hollow, iron rod into the crucible, and 
collects upon the end a pear-shaped lump of glass, 
just as we saw him do before. Resting his rod upon 
a stand, he turns it gently round, and allows the sur¬ 
face of the lump to cool, to tit it for a second gathering. 
When he has enough, lie cools his pipe under a trough 
of water, that he may be able to handle it at any 
point, and proceeds to roll the glass until it becomes 
round and tapering to a point. 

A boy now blows down the rod while it is still be- 
ing turned by the gatherer, and expands the glass into 
a small globe. Again it is heated and again blown 
into a still larger globe. On the next page we see the 
different stages of blowing and heating from the solid 
mass to the flattened plate of glass. 

To keep the glass in this flexible condition, it is 
necessary that the furnaces should be worked with 
great regularity; sudden changes of temperature 
would affect its condition, and of course, produce in¬ 
ferior work. Badly prepared window-glass, for in¬ 
stance, will lose its transparency on being exposed to 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


151 


the air, therefore the ingredients for making it must 
be thoroughly tested before being used. 



GLASS TUBES AND CANES. 

In making glass canes, a mass of glass is gathered 
and rolled. A flat plate of glass, adhering to a work¬ 
ing-rod, is fixed to the end of the mass opposite to 
where the blow-pipe is attached. 

The workman keeps his blow-pipe in his hands, while 
his assistant holds the working-rod. They now sepa¬ 
rate, and recede from each other; the greater the dis- 

7 C 

tance between them, the greater the length of the 





























152 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


o*kss will be, and the smaller in diameter. Tube is 

O 

made in the same way as solid cane, with the differ¬ 
ence that the mass of glass is blown into and expanded, 
before it is drawn out. Tube or cane is speedily ren¬ 
dered workable by the intense heat of the flame, and 
can be easily manipulated. The lamp-worker prepares 
from tube some of the most delicate apparatus used 
in scientific research, also a variety of goods for 
domestic and medical purposes. Cane is used in con¬ 
junction with tube for ornamental objects. 
















STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


153 



HOUSE BUILDING. 

®OW, having <>'ot together our timber, stone 
and glass, we will proceed to build our 
house. 

First of all, the architect gets his plan 
ready. Here we have a plan showing how a 
school is to be laid out; where the class-rooms, 
lobby and stairs are to go. Then there is the elevation 
of the school-house, showing how it looks when 
completed. Tt is the same, of course, with your 
dwelling-house. The architect had to draw his plan 
first, then after the bricks or stones were laid tor the 









































































































































154 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



foundation,the carpenters came and made the frame, 
or skeleton, from some of the stronger timbers. Then, 
for days, the carpenters kept up a banging of boards 
and a tapping of hammers. Then came the men who 
nailed with such astonishing speed the grinning rows 
of laths upon the inside walls. It was the joiner who 


CARPENTER'S SHOP. 

fitted so neatly together the mouldings and window 
casinos. 

C 

A carpenter’s tool-chest contains many tools, the 
purpose, shape and making of which, have been the 
reward of Ions: thought, and of many minds. It is 
the great aim of the good apprentice to buy a chest of 
tools to call his own, and it is his pride, when he 



















































STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


155 


becomes a 


carpenter to keep them bright and sharp 


and in the best condition for use. 


A carpenter has rule 
let, hammers, chisels, 


s, axes, and adze, the saw, mal- 
o-oimes, aimers, wimbles, pin- 



cere, hookpins, a square, a bevel, a pair of compasses, 

a sraulte, a level and a plumb-rule. 

But who is this fellow in his suit of white in the cel¬ 
lar. stirriiu:' vigorously with a hoe a mixtuie of lime, 
sand and cow’s hair? It is the mason. See him now 
dexterously slapping it on to the naked laths, 
smoothing and polishing it with a grand flourish, call- 










































156 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


ing out " Mortar ! ” now and then to the strong-limbed 

O O 

man who brings up for him hods full of the " plaster.” 

Then we have the roofer, who puts on the slates 
and makes the roof sound and light, so that no rain 
or cold may get in ; the glazier, who fits in the neat 
panes of glass for the windows ; and the plumber and 



gas-fitter, who lay the pipes for water and gas along 
the floors and walls. Then come the painters and 
paper-hangers, who cover the plain boards and plas¬ 
tered walls with pretty designs in painting and wall¬ 
paper, and as soon as their work is dry, you may 
” move in.” 

























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


157 



■\VALiL-PAPEIl PKINTING MACHINE 


WALL-PAPER, 

HAT pretty wall-paper which makes your 
room so cheerful, comes in perfectly white 
and plain from the paper-mill in large 
rolls. How monotonous it would he to 
ve our walls covered with this as it is ! 
first step toward making it beautiful is that 
called " grounding.”' 

A machine spreads a color, by means of brushes, over 
the whole surface of the paper. 

These wet rolls of tinted paper are caught up and 
rolled over hot steam pipes, becoming dry as they 
make the slow journey of about four hundred feet. 

















158 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


Then the paper is reeled up and is ready for print¬ 
ing. 

A designer has drawn the pattern, and chosen and 
painted in the colors just as he wants them to be 
printed upon the paper. Now the colors must be 
mixed. In the mixing-room are to be seen all sorts 
of earthy coloring matters, such as raw and burnt 
umber, sienna, etc. ; many vegetable and mineral 
colors, besides gums and varnishes, and a kind of 
white clay, generally brought from South Carolina or 
New Jersey. 

This clay is stored in a rear building and brought 
into the mixing room by a railway. 

It is so fine and powdery it can lie mixed with 
the colors, and alum is added to make the surface 
glossy. 

The color is mixed in large circular vats by a great 

O i' c 

revolving arm, moved by a shaft overhead. From 
these vats the color is drawn off as it is wanted and 
transferred by a railway and elevators to the upper 
rooms. 

Now for every color the designer chose there must 
be a separate roller with its own part of the pattern 
stamped upon it and the rest left blank. The rollers 
arc bodies of wood with the pattern worked on them 
in brass or felt. 

Think how exactly the outlines must be made upon 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


159 


the rollers so that the parts of the pattern shall 
" match ” nicely ! 

What do yon think of a machine which will print 
twelve colors at once ? 

Now everything is ready, the rollers and their sep¬ 
arate troughs of color are placed, and the reel of 
grounded paper begins to pass over the great cylinder. 
Here it gets a spot of crimson for a flower, another 
roller imprints a dark green leaf, still another adds a 
stem, and so on until the whole pretty pattern is 
stamped on the paper as it rolls along. 

As fast as it comes out of the machine it is caught 
on sticks that rest on notches in an endless chain, and 
so is carried in graceful festoons over steam pipes to 
dry again. 

If there is any gilding to he put on, the paper, as it 
passes over the pipes, goes through another machine 
which puts on gold-dust with varnish. In some paper 
the gold or bronze powder is put on by hand. The 
part to be bronzed is painted over with varnish and 
the metal dusted on. 

Following the paper along over the pipes, we see is 
finally placed upon movable racks ready to be made 
into rolls for market. 


160 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



FURNITURE MAKING. 



S you curl yourself up in your favorite 
easy-cliair or sofa, it is difficult to imagine 
that the same chair or sofa was once a 
rough log in the forest. Those band-saws 
we read about, soon divided the log into 
even boards, and cut them into the right lengths for 
the legs, sides, arms, etc. The pattern of the pretty 
curved wood-work was marked upon these pieces, 
and scroll-saws cut them into the right shapes. Then 
the ends and edges were carved and rounded by the 
carving-machine, and the variety-moulder, planing 
and turning-machines next did more grooving, smooth- 
ing and ornamental work. Pieces that needed to be 























STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


161 


joined together, were taken to the " jointer,” which 
made the edges and angles of the pieces so smooth and 
even, that it is hard to find the seam. 

Notice how perfectly smooth the wood-work on the 
"arm” of your sofa is. The sand-papering machine 
helped along this part of the labor. 

That finest, prettiest carving was done by artistic 
workmen, "by hand.” No machine has yet been 
invented to do such exquisite work as that. 



The wood was dipped in an acid coloring bath to 
"ebonize” it, and the lines and bands of gold-leaf 
laid on. The skeleton of your comfortable sofa was 
next taken to the upholsterers, where the springs 
were fastened on and the hair tilled in. 

But the final finishing touches were not put on 
until just before the sofa was shipped to the store, for 
finished furniture of all kinds requires the greatest care. 

Bed-room and dining-room furniture-making are 
industries bv themselves. 



1G2 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 



majolica 


WEDGWOOD 


POTTERY 


POTTERY. 

TFIER necessary articles in furnishing our 
house are the cups and plates and dishes 
which we need for our use, besides vases 
and ornaments which are so pretty to look 
at and for holding flowers, etc. 

These are all made in a pottery, which it 
will he necessary for us to visit, in order to gain some 
idea of the w ay in which these articles are made. 

Entering one of the wide, low doors of the pottery 
we are shown into a room, clay bespattered enough. 












STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


163 


In the centre ot the floor, clay and water are being 
mixed into a soft, sticky mass. This is done by a 
machine turned by horses. 

The clay is carried to the next room where the pot¬ 
ter’s wheel” is whirling noiselessly. This wheel is a 
round block about the size of a large dinner plate and 
fitted horizontally upon a bench. 

On the bench beside the potter, the clay is piled, all 
ready to be shaped. He takes up as much as he can easily 
hold in both hands, kneads it, and, patting it till it 
looks like a "mud pie,” slaps it down upon the wheel. 

He places his foot upon a treadle under the bench, 
moves it to and fro and the wheel spins round and round 
with its burden of clay. He takes a flat instrument 
which looks like a wide knife-blade and holds it against 
the whirling " pie ” till the edge is nicely trimmed. 
Then, just as though it were some treasure he is try¬ 
ing to hide from prying eyes, he curves his two hands 
around the wet lump of clay so that none of it except 
a bit at the centre can be seen. His hands are held 
perfectly still, but the wheel whirls busily, and lo ! the 
ff pie ” has changed into a cone-like shape, and looks 
something like an oversized chocolate drop. 

He flattens this at the top with the blade-like tool, 
pares the sides a little, and, in a twinkling, the whole 
is changed into the form of a flower pot, bottom side 
upward. 


164 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


Now lie holds his hands—edgewise, this time—against 
the revolving clay till it is divided into two sections, 
held together, and looks a little like an hour glass 
without the frame, only that the upper section is much 
the larger. 

o 

Now he doubles his list and plunges it dexterously 
into the upper section and holds it there, while the 
clay whirls till a hollow is formed. Now he holds his 
hands with the thumbs inside the hollow and the fin¬ 
gers outside, takes them off, holds the flat instrument 
against the edge to flatten it, and against the sides to 
give them the right curve, and lo ! the top section is 
changed into one of those wide-mouthed, shallow, 
hanging-pots so pretty for iris or oxalis plants. A 
few turns more and he has shaped the saucer. 

Now he holds his left thumb' and fore-finger under 

o 

the pot, turns the wheel slowly, and, with his right 
fore-finger, bends an inch or so of the rim into a pretty 
curve. 

One, two, three, perhaps a dozen times he does this 
until the edge is fluted or scalloped all the way around. 

The pot is formed perfectly, but there it is stuck 
fast to the wheel. The workman holds a brass wire 
firmly against the wheel and passes it under the spot 
cutting it free in a twinkling. 

Now he lifts it tenderly with both hands and places 
it upon a board beside him with others. Outside in 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY 


165 


the sun and in the long, low, hot rooms yonder are 
rows and rows of these and other dishes of all sorts of 
patterns, placed to dry. 

When they are thoroughly dried, which will take a 
number of days, a liquid made of melted sand, lead, 



l’o I 


Hour and some other things 
into them to ''glaze them, 
smooth and shiny. 


will be poured over and 
that is, make their surfaces 


We pass along to the kiln, 
looks like a monstrous oven 


It is built of bricks and 
without a door. Into 





















166 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


this the putty-colored pots will be placed carefully, 
the aperture in the front here will be bricked up ; a 
great lire will be built in each of those oven-like open¬ 
ings in the bricks under the kiln, and the clay pots 
roasted and roasted in there, in the darkness, till they 
grow hard and dense ; and so red in the face their color 
will never rub oil' nor change. 

Pottery-making, so the proprietor tells us, while 
he shows us over the ware-rooms, where the long 
shelves arc piled with all manner of useful and beauti¬ 
ful " crockery,” is one of the oldest of the world’s 
industries. The people in the earliest days of Egypt, 
Babylonia and Assyria sat at the " potter’s wheel ” and 
rolled, and dabbed, and shaped the yielding clay much 


as we have seen it worked to-day. 

Dr. Livingstone, traveling in Africa, found that 
pottery-making had been known to the African people 
from the remotest days ; for broken bits of crockery 
were found hidden away among the oldest fossil bones 

«/ <3) 

discovered in their country. 

The most important manufactories of the United 
States are in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and 
Illinois. 

But we must hurry away from our talkative friend 
to another department, where our dishes for the table 
are made. Though we may all know that dishes in 
general are made from clay, we perhaps have to learn 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


167 


now that clay varies in kind, and is mixed with other 
things in different proportions. 

Dried hones, feldspar, broken bits of crockery and 
more especially hard Hints seem odd things enough to 
mix into a paste, yet here we shall see it done. 

The flints are thoroughly baked and burned in a 
kiln until they have lost their stony hardness and 
can be ground into powder. While the grinding is 
carried on, water is poured upon them until the whole 
forms a fine powdery paste. 

We step back a little while the different portions of 
clay, stone, etc., are being emptied into the” blending- 
vat.*’ The great wooden limbs of the machine creak 
and begin to turn at a great rate, setting the liquid all 
astir. How the mass mingles and foams ! We pass 
on from this vat to another which has finished its 
work. Here we see the same kind of mixture running 
out into a cistern through soft, fine sieves. 


The clay, ready for working at last, is taken to a 
”potter’s wheel” like the one we saw turning flower 
pots. In the same way as his pot grew from the 
coarser clay so from these slabs grow cups, basins, 
vases ; so fast we hold our breath with wonder. This 
process is called "throwing." 

Another thrower is making pretty-shaped, delicate 
teacups, on just the same kind of a lathe, only he has a 
mould fixed on the revolving wheel. The cups are 


168 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


shaped, sliced oft* and placed in rows on a board so 
fast that before we can count a hundred, the board is 
full; is lifted upon a boy’s head and borne away to the 
"hot rooms” to dry. When the cups are hardened a 
little they will receive a few finishing touches from the 


" turner.” 

There is another boy carrying out mugs. The 
shapes look natural, but not the color, for that is like 
very dirty putty. 

A young man is making handles for the mugs. He 
has two, large, tin trays before him ; he takes up, one 
by one, pieces of wet dough, about four or five inches 
long, with which a boy keeps him supplied, bends it, 
and slightly flattens each end over his finger and 
thumb in a long curve as he puts it down upon one of 
the trays where he already has long rows of handles. 
After these are dried they will be fitted on with the "slip” 
which serves instead of nails in this establishment. 

Ewers, basins, tea-pots, candle-sticks, or other 
things having odd shapes, require to be moulded, and, 
to make this possible, they must be moulded in sepa¬ 
rate parts and joined by the "slip.” 

Two pieces of wet clay are rolled into a paste, then 
stamped out into two pancakes of about the required 
size ; if they are a little larger it will not much matter, 
for the trimmings can be worked up again as easilv as 
bits of pie-crust cut from around the plate. 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


169 


Each of these pancakes is laid in a plaster-of-Paris 
mould and carefully pressed into its hollows. Then 
the edges are trimmed off, and the two halves of the 
mould are joined so as to form one object. If the 
object requires a handle, spout or knot, it is carried to 
another room. 



POTT Eli \ . 


Here one man is making handles ; another by his 
side is making spouts, moulding them in a thing like 
an overgrown plaster-of-Paris nose. He lines this 
nose with clay paste, pares oft the waste and pulls it 
out a spout. This process is called moulding the ware. 

We next find ourselves watching the "Hat ware 







































































170 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


pressers.” At what a rate they can make dishes, 
saucers, plates ! It is no use trying to count them. 
Here are more pancakes — piles upon piles of them ! 

A hoy hands one to a "presser,” who lays it on his 
plaster-of-Paris-mouId, which looks exactly like a stone 
plate bottom side upwards, and is fastened on a 
round block. Instantly it begins to spin furiously 
round, as does everything in this place. The worker 
holds a tool against the rim, presses it a little and — 
whir-r-r ! the shapeless, flat cake of clay is changed 
into a saucer or plate which is instantly lifted off the 
mould and carried away. It is left in the "hotroom” 
for about two hours, when we are told it must be 
baked, else it would crumble back to clay again. All 
white ware must be tired at least twice ; once before 
" glazing ” to shrink it, and once after the glazing is 
put on, to harden the glaze. 

Going across the yard to another circular kiln, built 
of bricks and bound with bands of iron, where our 
paste-like dishes will be baked, we see great, rough 
shallow pans made of fire-clay. 

In a shed, near by, several men are packing all kinds 
of dishes into these pans or seggars, as they are called. 
The filled seggars are packed one upon another with 
their precious contents into the kiln. When all are 
safely packed, pile upon pile, the door is bricked up 
and the dishes baked forty hours, sometimes more; 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


171 


all this time they are carefully watched over by expe¬ 
rienced men. 

When the cups, saucers, etc., are gently lifted out 
of their brown baking-pans, they are not red, as were 
the earthenware pots after baking, but lighter and 
more delicate-looking. 

They are next carried to the dipping-room, a long, 
low apartment at the other end of the works. At one 
end of the dipping-room is a kind of deep trough, 
in which a man with his arms bared is stirring up a 
soft mass of glaze or varnish. When a dish is set 
down by his side he takes up each article, one by one, 
holding it daintily as though it were hot and passes it 
rapidly through the syrup-like compound. Then he 
whirls it rapidly about, so that the sticky glaze shall 
run evenly over it. 

The worker tells us that there are numerous kinds 
of glazing used ; some for the cheapest pots ; some for 
press varnishing; some for finer sorts of porcelain. 
About this glaze every pottery has a mystery of its 
own. 

But how are the pretty ornaments put upon the 
plates, saucers, etc. ? 

Before the dishes are glazed they are taken to a long 
room, where are a stove, a press and several pans of 
water. 

A man is making proofs of an engraving off a cir- 


172 


STORIES OF INDUSTRY. 


cular copper plate. He rubs a pasty blue ink over the 
warm plate, and when it has tilled the pattern he 
scrapes it oft* again from the surface of the other part, 
then lays on the metal plate a piece of tissue-like 
paper, and, by means of a squeeze in the press, pro¬ 
duces an oily blue proof or picture which, after under¬ 
going a process of washing and rubbing, leaves a bunch 
of flowers or a pretty landscape, ornamenting what a 
short time ago was only a plain white saucer or plate. 


Thus we see that by man’s intelligence our needs 
are supplied, and the earth made titter for the habita¬ 
tion of the human race. 

Our skill in weaving, our increase in knowledge, 
our enterprise in trade, our great works of construc¬ 
tion, all come from the knowledge of man’s weakness 


and needs. 

In a future book, we shall tell you something of the 
manufacture of other necessaries of life, such as food 
and clothing, books and newspapers, and all those 
things which make life so enjoyable. 


































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